by cookiemaster 82 Replies latest jw experiences
Think about it- how else could an organization last 135 years now since 1879 without using dishonesty or illegal means to survive and accomplish it's financial goals ?
Because they aim to vulnerable and gullible people. And there are a plenty out there.
To me it is blindingly obvious that the GB are just front men, not without some influence no doubt, but they are not going to bring in new doctrines or procedures without approval from the Legal and Finance guys who lurk in the shadows.
Motivation for the Puppet Masters ? a secure life with huge income, no risk, and no having to go out there and get the business as financiers and lawyers normally do.
I am convinced that they work along with the Writing Department to make sure that things continue to work, that the $$$ continue to flow in.
The GB may have amongst the eight one or two who are still believers to a great degree, but the rest will keep them in check, squashing any silly move they may wish to make.
The only way we would find out who the Puppet Masters are, and how it all really works, is if one of the Eight did a Ray Franz, woke up, left and published his story. He would need to watch his back though, too many $$$ at risk.
Endless speculation.
One thing that has to be realized is that the WTS. doctrines set decades ago created something of
monumental importance to the leaders of this organization, for these doctrines cultivated an expanding
and assuming amount of actual power and control toward themselves, they were not only expressed vehicles
to attract attention to the organization's published literature.
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That being so the WTS. heads set about on strenuous act to protect these set doctrines which was
previously created and once the publishing organization got continuously developed this put even more
pressure to reattain those doctrines from a financial operational perspective.
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Opposing those doctrines and revealing their faults could potential also break down the image
that the organization was NOT solemnly chosen by god as his earthly organization.
So retrospectively you can see from all those tangible aspects why the WTS. had to protect which it
previously created.
Oh dear, flipper. Now, I respect you as a long-time forum member who has a lot of good things to say, but that last post is really going too far. Imagine what an active JW would think reading this kind of Alex Jones crap. "Geez, these apostates are nuts!"
It's certainly true that the Society uses real estate to make money. The periodic ("voluntary") KH remodels are a way to keep the buildings in good shape to be sold some day. This is just common business sense and I doubt most JWs would have an issue with this since it provides more money to the Society for the preaching work (and yes, more money for further reinvestment, for further preaching work).
Some of you think that the Society exists to make money, but their initial goal was clearly just to publish literature, unless you doubt Russell's sincerity. Now, all the more since the literature ceased being sold, the Society needs income to fund all that printing. We can't deny that they produce a ton of printed material. We've seen the printeries pumping out many books a minute and we know that these millions of copies are going worldwide in hundreds of languages.
So the question here is not so much "How do they make money?", which we all agree on, but "Why do they make money, for doctrine or for the love of money?", or in other words, does the tail wag the dog? It could be that after starting out as an honest venture under Russell, eventually the divisions in charge of making money became influential over the org., but this would have happened accidentally.
If it has happened, the GB almost certainly still have as much power as they desire to have. They may choose to cede some power to Legal by checking with them on the ramifications of doctrinal changes before they make them. But Legal cannot stop the GB from making whatever changes they see fit. Can you imagine Legal telling Writing "Don't write this"? A GB member is the closest thing to God on earth for the brothers; one of them can simply walk into the Writing department and say, "Do write this", and it will be done.
If they do let Legal have their way sometimes, it's out of a desire not to upset the boat. I do believe that there is dishonesty in the way that the GB ignore what they probably recognize as valid criticisms of some teachings, and that they do this because of pride, mental laziness, and maybe fear. But we simply have no evidence that they are mere "front men", and the word of a DFed GB relative is not helpful when we don't know anything about the person and their mental state. Ray Franz was a well-known figure with unassailable earnestness, and he did not document anything nefarious about the Society, did he?
Even investing in bloodless medicine is not dishonest if it comes after a decision to ban blood for (perceived) Biblical reasons. It's just a prudent way to use insider info to earn money for the publishing work, plus investing is a means of funding something. Thus, if the friends' contributions are invested in developing a machine to help save their lives in surgery, is this not a worthy use of the money?
As I mentioned before, organizations seek to perpetuate themselves, and sometimes the Society might forget which end of the dog is in control. But belief systems perpetuate themselves, too. The belief that the end is coming soon is something that seems to be endemic to humans from all places and times. The Society could simply be seen as an embodiment of humans' eschatological phobia. It will go away when people stop being afraid of the dark.
Apog, you remind me of something Slimboyfat posted which I'll never forget. He said to never underestimate how much the leadership truly believes. With that in mind, Ray Franz is a good example in that there's no telling how long he would have remained a JW had they not moved on him first. That said, these endless speculation threads are hollow to me. It's all just fantasy, imagination, speculation, endless rumors with flimsy evidence if any evidence at all. So they're filtering obscene amounts of cash from donations, properties, etc., yet there's no evidence of anybody really reaping the benefits. I'd like to believe the GB are just a smokescreen for someone or some really insidious people behind the scenes, but, in this case, what you see might really be what it is. Everything else is speculation. By the way, I'm on a tablet and flipping between tabs before posting causes me to lose what I typed, so I'm going off memory, but did someone mention, the mob?
Well said SFPW, very funny I agree endlees speculation is nonsense. Kate xx
There is nobody behind the GB controlling them any more than there is someone behind the leaders of the Latter Day Saints or Seventh Day Adventists or Christadelphians. The lawyers and investment bankers help define certain boundaries that constrain the GB operationally, but they don't control the GB. The GB could vote tomorrow to accept orthodox trinitarianism and the immortality of the soul, and the lawyers and accountants would just go along for the ride as the whole thing schismed and fractured like Herbert Armstrong's religion did after he died.
What controls the GB is a religious meme, a unique interpretation of the Bible that Russell borrowed and adapted from the remnants of the Millerite movement of the mid 19th century. Russell's 'Bible Student' movement should really have died off after 1914, when his eschatalogy was clearly proven to be false, just like William Miller's movement fizzled out after the 1843 'great disappointment', but one of the most clever religious charlatans of all time, Joseph Rutherford, managed to find a new market for this peculiar brand of religious snake oil and keep the latest incarnation of Millerism growing post-1914.
Now here we are 100 years later and Rutherford's snake oil is still selling like hot cakes.
Yes, yadda, one person whose sincerity I will never be seen defending is Rutherford. I'm not sure whether he believed a word of it after a certain point, and yet even he can be seen writing an enthusiastic letter to the magazine years before he joined the organization and rose to power. Power corrupts.
And yes SFPW, a newbie on page 1 did mention the mob but did not offer any supporting details. Anyway, as you said, the ones at the top are, in some fashion, probably true believers, even if they also keep some things from the flock; namely, how much of their interpretation of the Bible is guesswork (and even this may be unknown to them, if they believe that God is guiding them, though I imagine they all become jaded eventually when they realize that the body of them can't unanimously agree on many issues, as if they're not all under holy spirit after all).
Having known some senior brothers in the org., I absolutely saw sincerity and, in at least one, a frightening level of zeal. Top-level brothers are also ideal company men, of course. They do not draw much of a line between the corporation and the belief system, so anything that threatens one threatens the other. Thus an action taken to preserve the org. would be, in their own mind, a defense of "the truth".
It should be realized that the WTS. does have people (JWS) who work on the organization's financial matters,
expendables to receivables and investments as well.
Is the organization pulling in what was first suggested in the opening post ? of couse not.
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One thing to note is that there are many distract branches being closed down and sold off because of the
WTS. is trying to down size its printing operations.
With all of the branches being sold, the WTS coffers are indeed fattening up, more so than any time in its
history.
