Charisma can work wonders.
It can be both entertaining or maddening to large crowds of eager listeners.
Whole populations can be swayed by a silver tongue or mad ranting poison-sac attached to a man leading a movement.
The history of the Watchtower Society proves this.
Leadership is tricky and movements are volatile. Those who made you can undo you too.
Look at Charles Taze Russell. He went from the haberdasher men's clothing business to world famous evangelist before he burned out
and lost his wife and became embroiled in scandal and controversy. His fabrications caught up with him as his matchstick kingdom was faced
with too many "corrections" due to too many false claims.
The equally charismatic Judge Rutherford managed to infuriate and inspire all at the same time as he scooped up what was left of Russell's well-funded publishing empire and split it into warring factions almost immediately.
By the time he died of rectal cancer, a whole new religion had been born.
Using people of faith as firewood, the Judge had thrown human lives into the fire of martyrdom like some zealot Mullah in present day JIHAD.
Creating billboards of "faithful believers willing to die", Rutherford attracted people wanting to join a religious movement that had some explosive zeal and purpose to it instead of the corner church style passive resignation.
None of this was going to last, however. You can only run lemmings off a cliff just so often before they screech to a halt and begin to question matters in depth.
The source of fuel for the JW engine was Fred Franz whose firebrand zeal for reinventing shopworn Adventist doctrines never lagged.
The man was on a pedestal until he balked at the removal of GB power in the hands of his titular buddy, Nathan Knorr in 1972.
Why 1972?
Cooler heads were aghast at the runaway train leading to 1975 and Knorr had approved it.
Who woulda thunk the entire world of JW's would glom on to "yet another" prediction with such hysteria?
Yet, they did. All except the more business-like corporate types who saw a good thing in the Real Estate business.
By removing the power from one man and placing into a larger pool of minds the signal had been given that the real "end" was nearing.
Franz was President even after he derailed the already sad reputation of JW's as nutcases. How? Why?
Simply because his poison sack had been removed and he had been chastened.
His focus narrowed to cracking down Inquisition style on nay-sayers who had begun to see the real "light". Apostate war was about to commence.
Don't be misled by the NUMBERS GAME. It does not matter how many Jehovah's Witnesses go by that silly name worldwide.
It doesn't mean what it once meant.
When I was first associated with the religion in the fifties and sixties the average JW was expected to master the theology and give a scathing
rebuttal to any who challenged them.
They were a feisty and well-indoctrinated lot. The corpses of the faithful were on prominent display with proud and zealous lunacy as the STANDARD
for what was expected of us all whether it be blood transfusions or so-called "christian neutrality" in imprisonment.
As Franz grew more senile and began having conversations with his own shoes, the fire went out of the prophetic/exegetic chronology and date-setting
engine that drove all the lemmings repeatedly off new cliffs of self-discovery.
Today, the average JW at the door doesn't know their pathetic ass from a jar of peanut butter.
They avoid confrontation for a good reason: the INTERNET has armed the householder with facts--implacable particulars that can unwind their clock.
We now have silly child-like minds and faces with eyes full of zeros mouthing slogans and hawking pamphlet-sized Watchtower magazines.
The "real" Watchtower has gone underground and is a snake swallowing its own tail.
There is no longer any "there" there.
The religion became a cult around 1983 when it turned on its own members by alienating them from their own families. DF'd children and relatives could be coaxed back into the fold before that date. But, the clampdown became retribution and condemnation full throttle in 83. You could be kicked out just for speaking a single word to ex-members.
The CULT could not preach out loud the hate that was being fostered for the "mentally diseased" apostates because it would immediately be seen as criminal. The wound to the soul of the family could never heal.
Loyalty to the "mouthpiece" has replaced education in doctrine.
Drones still slog from door to door half-heartedly but they have nothing to say that means anything with any energy or conviction.
The JW is dead on his feet and his butt aches in the folding chairs as his remaining family is bored silly at the monotonous meetings week after week after week.
The young have fled and the old see the cracks and feel the falling plaster hitting them on the head.
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES are ripe for an inside takeover and it is happening NOW. The old guard is dying off.
It won't be long now...
