AdamH:
Completly agree. Even when the Revelation book came out, as confusing as it was, it was "challenging" to study it, with all the prophecies to be explained. Many nights you would go home from Book Study with your head reeling..... even when I conducted it! I still have my original copy, that has been studied 3 or 4 times at the book study over the years. It's kind of like looking back at your HS Yearbook, looking thru it and the notes that were made.
Granted, the "understanding" of much of it changed over the years, and most of it is still speculation anyways.
But I remember really trying hard, and studying hard~
Nowadays its ..... Read paragraph,...... answer question to paragraph....... what do you need to do different....... you're a slacker.........Even many of the questions now are FEELING based instead of intellectually based.... ie: "What do you look forward to? How does Jeremiah's experience fortify you? How are you affected by this new understanding?" etc etc.
There's no meat in anything, no logical development of a particular point......just lots of PICTURES, fewer pages, coloring books and connect-the-dots(wtf?), HUGE margins, LARGE fonts, SIMPLIFIED versions of everything, and emotional MOVIES with dramatic, unrealistic acting to move you to actions based on guilt. My kids, in their teens, even see it......... More and more I see everything based on EMOTION, and FEELINGS geared toward the uneducated.... not logic, or sensibleness.