This a a view neither JWs or most of their critics are seeing. Both groups are in their own "sideshow".
Overall there is probably a decrease. In a complex system certain sectors will have growth. Overall in 40 years it is a massive decrease. So putting out the a "2%" growth stat can just as easily be a -2% actual decrease covered with stat fiction. They have it at a bare minimum of perceived growth, at a level that has to actually be contracting overall due to system dynamics of contraction in the more intensive nations. This is shown almost literally in almost a billion in property assets in the US being liquidated. If we knew the whole story internationally and in other assets Bethel is probably shift a couple billions to external positions for the coup phase.
It is undeniable to those understanding these corporate signals they are anomalous. To JWs it can be sold as "the end is really near brothers!". To those in the know in Bethel and externally it is the end of Bethel that is drawing close, NOT the world system. So every positioning can be taken with a theological or JW mythological cover in their "self fulfilling prophecy" prepared by Bethel.
It is so well covered in this subterfuge every stage of the coup can be sold to JWs as "prophecy fulfilling brothers!" or "it's the end!!" or "it's the attack on Babylon the Great!" or "it's King North of Daniel 11:44!!" or "it's the UN!!!" or "we are being persecuted just like in 1914-1918!!" or "the GB/brothers have known all this would come!!".
In any event Bethel can go through a corporate deconstruction phase and raise no true alarm signal in the isolated JW community, because as seen it is expected. By looking at what JWs are primed to expect, we can reverse engineer what is coming to fulfill the Bethel "self fulfilling prophecy".
This allows the operation to go further because now a completely different operation can be deployed to a final coup [phase], and Bethel can even cancel the JW ministry by GB Pied Piper command, and cease the ministry even though it is not a scriptural mandate in any prophecy, it is all Bethel invention to aid the cessation of the JW ministry and the removal of the corporate authority into legal and financial quagmires for potentially years to come. JWs even expect their own ministry to "come to an end when the preaching work is over". Of course there is no actual scriptural backing for this, the "great tribulation" effect allows deceptions to be injected with that HUGE expectation in JWs.
Everything Bethel is bringing on JWs is already primed into JW expectation very directly. Those expectations furnish a "self fulfilling prophecy", but the fulfillers will be the Bethel coup artists.
Thus a well designed subterfuge such as this in EVERY possible psychological override in the JW collective mind is not accidental, it cannot be, it is too well orchestrated. Whether in "prophetic interpretation" or assumed mythology, JWs are mentally primed with all the elements of Bethel's downfall and the end of the ministry. Now the average JW and even their critics are not seeing the true bigger picture, the JW org is being couped from within, like any other classis espionage development in history that was successful. The Bethel one is ingenious, it is top notch subterfuge with big booty to be taken in the process, slave labor provided capital development from the pockets of the JW slaves too boot.
There has been few coup investment opportunities as lucrative as the final payout from Bethel will be. We are talking minimal investment but from JW's own wallets, free slave labor, global scope, efficient deployment, like massive ROI, JWs are financing their own system demise, and it will be sold to them as "prophecy fulfilling brothers!!".
So like any other highly controlled system, but this one by experts of deception also present in many national media systems, the true pros of behavior control, this one is also totally predicted in many contingencies, it is pure fiction Bethel is installing into a dated and isolated people. JWs have even ignored all of post 1990 to today, JWs live mentally in a nation-state age of 1950-1970, all focus is on the past, all material is recycled, all alternative media is demonized, all possible evidence is hidden in the "apostate" tsunami and omitted from the JW "food at the proper time" which is a prepared GB dinner, at Styrofoam and wood pulp half rations to boot.
One couldn't wake up JWs if one tried. The ship going down, then reflecting on it a couple years in and after the process, is the only way for the light to peak through the fog into the JW cave dweller eyes, when JWs will only have other sources of information from which to put the story together. "The end" JWs are being primed to expect is coming on Bethel, the world system will continue on, and in that day over day, year over year continuation, is when JWs will start to comprehend something really is not right.
That is when JWs will start to awake, in my opinion a full two years or so into the Bethel engineered corporate deconstruction project. In it's initial stage JWs will AID the process go figure. Neither JWs or most of their critics are really seeing what is going on, it is not random hypocrisy and slow spiritual decadence, it is gradual, consistent, planned and purposeful from within. The "Armageddon" is on Bethel, it is not something that simply spontaneously generates itself, it takes intelligent energy and strategy to get this big. The JW "enemy" is truly within, resourced and intelligent.
Feeding JWs one thing internally, and all their critics something else externally and on the Web, is how Bethel directs the deception over BOTH groups, JWs and the global public in general. It is their intended perception that both respective groups have in different forms, but both are engineered to divert attention from the real operation. Nothing Bethel says can actually be trusted, all the stats are prepared as are the effects and JW mental priming amped up now, as well as scandal fed out to stumble more people from "the truth" fourfold, than are coming in in this "astounding growth" which is just fictional stats out of the true context of far more stumbling, and an over all massive downward spiral since 1975.
For JWs their entire mental shell is Bethel prepared and isolated as much as possible that really aids the overall delusion greatly, and that shell is a solid twenty years of now total darkness. The "Governing Body" 1976 coup was just the beginning of a farther reaching final coup operation. Everything from thereon in was engineered by deceptive expertise. I mean look at today's JWs and their spiritual Bethel fossil, all a snapshot from 1980.
Today's JW critics see fragments, even some JWs are seeing this and that but this concept puts all the pieces, of JW and JW critics, together into a whole meaning of what is really going on, from WITHIN Bethel, it is a big act, a big production for big profit and attempting to derail and end the JW ministry permanently. A corporate takeover by international lawyers. The waves of ridicule will be enormous as this plays out and the world also sees JW's prophecy failing overall. A tribulation will be beginning, that much is true, but everything else JWs teach is way too premature. Now JWs can be tossed into that quagmire and confusion with nary a clue as to this development.
The JW "self fulfilling prophecy" will be fulfilled.