Lots and lots of hair-splitting going on here.
For those of you who were not in the Borg then, let me say that - having been there - everyone knew exactly what was meant. They knew the original statements upon which all this was based that appeared in a new book released at the summer assemblies that year, 1966, "Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God."
"The evidence is in," cackled Freddy, "all of it." Ooops, later he had to invent a way to stretch out the time with that "don't know how long it was between the creation of Adam till the creation of Eve" nonsense. Freddy was nothing if not slick. Even if he was senile. And he was that too.
To show how plain it was put, I was in the KH with a non-witness girl I was dating at the time when my uncle, the overseer, got up to review the publication with the congregation. After it was over, the girl turned to me and said, "So your religion is saying the world is going to come to an end in 1975?" Well, yes, that's pretty much what they're saying. Fairly obvious even to a non-JW. Never did see HER again.
And not only were they saying it, ALL WITNESSES had to accept it. And not only accept it, but to preach it from door-to-door. As usual, if you didn't buy it and said so, you were dipping yourself in liquid shit with the local "servants." And there is vastly more. All the small statements in the WT and Awake, and in service meeting talks, ministry school parts, public talks, you name it. IT was coming, by God, and you'd better believe it.
We heard about people selling their homes and going into the pioneer work. "What a wonderful way to spend the last few years in this old system," (or words to that effect) crowed the MS publication. "Weeks or months, not years," they said. And taken in THE CONTEXT OF THE TIMES, it meant something totally different than it looks in cold black and white on this page. Dissect the commas and the qualifiers all you want. You can't dissect away the truth of the matter AT THE TIME.
One of the elders in my congregation later got himself a status license plate that read simply: 1975.
An elder here in Savannah borrowed $50,000 dollars on the equity in his home and splurged on a world tour with his family, secure in the knowledge that he'd never have to pay it back. He's way past retirement age now, old and tired, but he can't retire because he's STILL paying back the fifty large.
And the WTBTS continued poking the fire in its publications, and in visits by the CO. The sense of excitement and expectation was palpable. And BY GOD you'd better believe it and teach it, too. Or your ass would be on the outside looking in. And they weren't bashful about saying so, either. IF you had a problem taking the WT door to door, the one that headlined "Why are you looking forward to 1975," you'd get a visit in the little room, or the JC would drop by your home uninvited to "adjust your thinking." Assholes weren't qualified to adjust the water heater and here they are to work on your psychological makeup.
This phenomena was no misunderstanding on the part of the publishers, as the lying bastards on the GB tried to claim when it didn't happen in 1975 as they THEY said it would. That was nothing but the old dodge known as "blame the victim." Just exactly like the Nazis, the JWs spiritual forebears and exemplars, did. It was the JEW'S fault that the Nazis threw them in the street and then gassed, shot, poisoned, and worked them to death. The JEWS brought it on themselves. And so had the publishers. Big misunderstanding. The publishers brought it on themselves.
In a pig's ass they did.
You folks can split hairs over who said what and how many times "may" appeared in some arcane sentence if you want. I was there through it all, and the GB itself was and is totally, utterly, irrevocably responsible for the entire scam.
Things look differently from the perspective of a few years, but those of us who were there don't need to dissect sentences.
Just like those who were giving their lives in WW II have a different perspective on dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki than all the armchair generals with their leftist leanings today second guessing what people did in the heat of war half a century ago.
That's enough from me and is my $0.02 for today AND tomorrow.
Francois