Excellent quotes DesirousOf Change! It was great to see them presented in chronological order. You just showed how a 'Watchtower jerk job and mind fuck' is created and then dismantled all within the short span of 13 years.
A QUESTION FOR JW'S who say, "The brothers were overly zealous" about 1975
by Terry 49 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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sparky1
This should be the uniform for the entire GOVERNING BODY, Writing Department and Service Department. Maybe if they look at each other long enough they will learn to stop pontificating on their ridiculous religious ideas and begin to treat 'the flock' as real human beings with needs,wants and desires unique to individuals. The Rank and File NEVER made up the BULLSHIT surrounding 1975! The only ones that should take the blame and responsibility are the creators of this ludicrous idea.
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redvip2000
How was it "true" if it changed to its opposite? Why keep 7 million JW's busy preaching and teaching things which
turn out NOT to be worth saving?"
He gave the usual replies. If you wait on Jehovah He makes it come out right.
Wait on Jehovah? But who exactly is responsible for the information given in the first place, Jehovah or the GB? If it was Jehovah, why was it false? If it was the GB, then how is Jehovah using his organization to speak to His people?
How much time could we say is reasonable for the creator of the entire universe, to simply give a piece of information to a group of humans? 5 years? 10 years? Does jehovah need maybe 50 years to correct simple things?
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Finkelstein
The pertaining question remains ... what was the risk the leaders of the WTS. had to lose if Christ didn't take his heavenly throne in 1914,
on their own time scale not god's ?
They probably assumed (F Franz, N Knorr) that they could say over time, well it came from imperfect men or express that we were just overly zealous for the event to happen.
The leaders of the WTS. knew then just as today, if anyone disagreed with their teachings they could be banned from the congregation and labeled evil.
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The WTS. doctrines are their product that they sell. its just that they want only ones who are willing and faithfully to do just that.
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JWS are the abidingly trained sales representatives for the Watchtower Publishing house.
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The reality is 1975 and the bogus 6000 dating scheme was created to spur on the proliferation of the WTS's literature.
They knew they were creating a semblance of fear and anxiety to their already contained members.
The game worked, the WTS. never had such a spurt of growth, not only in literature distribution but in actual
baptized members,. Top that off with an increase in money being drawn into the organization.
Sure there was a slight drop off of the membership shortly after 1975 but the money attained was kept and added to the organization's overall assets.
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singlebaby
marked.
Singlebaby
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Terry
The one thing JW's have never been able to do (because of the over-anxious GB) is "Wait" on Jehovah.
The persistent urge has been rabid date-setting, over-promising, goading, fear-mongering, leveraging the doomsday clock.
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Hairtrigger
Marked. thank you.
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Mary
Oh dear. I had a conversation with a JW elder on-line about this very thing a couple of years ago. I won't bore you with the entire conversation, but here's part of it on Amazon in a book about the WTS:
JW: As for the so-called 1975 fiasco, I was there and a presiding overseer/presiding pastor of a congregation and I KNOW hat was said and taught. NO statement saying 1975 would be the End, NO statement saying that an Angel said, in a vision we were told, etc. In fact note what was said to us.
At a convention held in Baltimore, Maryland, F. W. Franz gave the concluding talk. He began by saying: "Just before I got on the platform a young man came to me and said, `Say, what does this 1975 mean?'" Brother Franz then referred to the many questions that had arisen as to whether the material in the new book meant that by 1975 Armageddon would be finished, and Satan would be bound. He stated, in essence: `It could. But we are not saying. All things are possible with God. But we are not saying. And don't any of you be specific in saying anything that is going to happen between now and 1975. But the big point of it all is this, dear friends: Time is short. Time is running out, no question about that.' Notice: "But we are not saying, And don't any of you be specific in saying anything that is going to happen between now and 1975."
That was our official position. What some may have said is beyond anyone's control, but the WTS NEVER made the claim Rhodes and others try to infer we did.
Me: Did you even bother reading what I wrote? I gave you the SPECIFIC example of what Wisconsin Sheboygan District Overseer Brother Charles Sunutko SAID to the audience of Witnesses during a PUBLIC TALK in 1967. If you somehow missed this, this is what was said:
"...Well now, as Jehovah's Witnesses, as runners, even though some of us have become a little weary, it almost seems as though Jehovah has provided meat in due season. Because he's held up before all of us, a new goal. A new year. Something to reach out for and it just seems it has given all of us so much more energy and power in this final burst of speed to the finish line. And that's the year 1975. ... Well, we don't have to guess what the year 1975 means if we read the Watchtower. ...And don't wait 'till 1975. The door is going to be shut before then....As one brother put it, "Stay alive to Seventy-Five..."
What part of that don't you get? If the Organization never claimed anything about 1975, then where did all the Witnesses get this idea from in the first place? Huh? And please don't bother trying to say that he `must have said this on his own', because as a District Overseer, he would have the outline of his talk that came straight out of Brooklyn Bethel. It.was.said and for you to SIT there and type a bold-faced LIE trying to claim that the Organization never stated that 1975 would be the end just demonstrates the depth of your delusions and the extent you will go to in order to cover up their false
predictions.No Witness is allowed to make independent predictions, especially by way of a public talk. Anyone who said something so outrageous as the District Overseer said above without the full approval of the Bethel, would have been in major trouble for daring to go beyond what the Governing Body approved of and you and I both know it. He probably would have been disfellowshipped for `apostasy' for telling thousands of Witnesses that Armageddon was coming in 1975 if the Governing Body didn't whole-heartedly approve of him saying that.
I have asked you repeatedly the same question which you have so far refused to answer: How can someone have God's Holy Spirit on them, call themselves 'prophets' (even in the basic sense as you are trying to claim), tell people that The End is right around the corner for the past 130 years, print countless books and magazine that in fact, DO try to predict the future, but claim you don't call yourselves "prophets? '
JW: if as you seem to think he is repeating what he was told to say by the GB (Governing Body of JW's) then it contradicted the clear quote I gave from the V.P. (GB member) Of the WTS, so that doesn't fit either. If it had been a manuscript he and every D.O. would have said exactly the same
thing and they didn't. It wasn't said at the District Convention I attended that year, nor at the one my wife, then much younger and not married to me, attended. It was an isolated instance, if true, he said what he wanted not what he was told to say. Outlines gave general direction and the speaker filled in with his thoughts. That has changed now and virtually every talk is a manuscript, because some went too far with their own thoughts.How would you know any of this? Your name indicates a woman and you would not have been a servant where such matters were discussed. You would not have been a speaker, as I was, where a misstep will get you counseled about it but NOT disfellowshipped. The only way he would be disfellowshipped would have been if he insisted he was right and the WTS wrong and he was going to teach that. Then after repeated counsel he would have been removed as a servant/elder/pastor.
Me: what you have is called 'selective amnesia' where you choose to pointedly ignore written documentation from that time because it's inconvenient and embarassing for you. Every Witness in the late 1960s and early 1970s knows that there was a huge build-up to 1975 and that this idea came from what was written in the literature and what was said from the platform. This was NOT an 'isolated' case as you are pathetically trying to assert---it happened in all congregations and you and I both know it. The fact that you are lying through your teeth by trying to state that it didn't happen, that it was only a few people who were going out on their own and promoting this idea, is nauseating and incredibly deceitful. I believe though, you call it "theocratic warfare" (roll of eyes).
This was no isolated case. I know many Witnesses from many parts of North America and even Europe who remember those years leading up to 1975. Some, like you, choose to have the selective amnesia by ignoring all the quotes that were in the literature at the time that most definitely pointed to 1975 as being "The End", but most realize that Organization made predictions that they should have never made. After they lost a tremendous number of followers in the following years, even the top guns were forced to acknowledge that they were at least partially to blame for the fiasco:
"With the appearance of the book Life Everlasting-in Freedom of the Sons of God, and its comments as to how appropriate it would be for the millennial reign of Christ to parallel the seventh millennium of man's existence, considerable expectation was aroused regarding the year 1975. ... Unfortunately, however, along with such cautionary information, there were other statements published that implied that such realization of hopes by that year was more of a probability than a mere possibility." Watchtower 1980 Mar 15 p.17
So please don't sit there and try to tell me that what the District Overseer said at the assembly was only an 'isolated' case. Clearly, as the statement above shows, the Organization itself promoted this idea.* * *
Didn't hear back from the asshole after this.
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Quendi
Thanks for all the quoted material on this topic. I well remember the buildup to 1975 and how excited so many of us were as that year approached. But not everyone I knew got carried away with the craze. The man who studied with me cautioned me continually about it, reminding me that similar expectations had been held for 1914 and 1925 so I should not stake everything on 1975. And in my congregation in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, most of the Witnesses I knew lived as they had always lived. True, we all hoped (and prayed) that 1975 would see Armageddon and many of us felt disappointment when that didn't happen, but we swallowed it and soldiered on. Why? Well, many of us believed the WTS nonsense about a period of time separating the creation of Adam and Eve so it seemed reasonable that the same time would separate September 1975 from Armageddon. But that hope faded and finally died as the weeks turned into months and then years.
However, the situation in my congregation was not the norm. We heard of people everywhere who made radical changes in their lives, especially when 1975 arrived and then unfolded. The fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon to communist forces fanned speculation, as did the initial convening of the CSCE (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, forerunner to today's OSCE) and its "officially" ending World War II with recognition of borders and signing of agreements. Then, in November, the UN passed a resolution declaring Zionism to be a form of racism, causing some to believe that an international attack on organized relgion, the opening bell for the Great Tribulation according to WTS eschatology, was imminent. The WTS and its Governing Body did nothing but encourage the hope that the end was at hand even if that meant waiting a short period after 1975 had passed. I also remember the January issues of the magazines calling 1975 a "critical year."
Then it all ended with a whimper and while many came to their senses and left the cult, the majority of us unwisely stayed on. And today, the WTS has done all it could to wipe the slate clean, purging all references to its role from its online library and cloaking the subject in silence so that new recruits know nothing about it. Thanks for the Internet which has kept the subject alive and the research of those who have unearthed the evidence of the WTS role in promoting this false teaching. I think it will help some who want to know more about the organization's past, but I have to wonder how it will affect those still inside the organization who remember those frenzied years.
Quendi
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baldeagle
Marked. Great quotes.