*" .amazing growth, prosperity ..&qu...

MacHislopp

Hello everyone,

I was wondering about the quote found in the
february watchtower (15/2001 p. 27), there in § 17 it is written:

" In his book These Also Believe, Professor Charles S.Braden
said:' Jehovah's Witnesses have literally covered the earth with
their witnessing. It may truly be said that no single religious group
in the world displayed more zeal and persistence in the attempt to
spread the good news of the Kingdom than Jehovah's Witnesses.
This movement will very likely go on from strength to strength.'
How right he was! When he wrote those words 50 years ago, only
some 300,000 Witnesses were preaching around the world. What
would he say today, when about 20 times that number-some six
million-are preaching the good news?"

To see better the point, you have to read the question for this §, it
asks:
" What did one writer say about Jehovah's Witnesses, and
what growth have they experienced?"

Let me focus on ONE aspect of this § i.e. the statement concerning
"growth " of JW in the last 50 years. To make sure that the figures
are correct, I have only used the world report since 1961 and here
are my "mathematical " conclusions:

***1961 no. of average publishers……………884,587

***Tot. no. of baptisms 1962-2000………. 7,783,430
_________
***Max. tot. of baptz. Witnesses…………. 8,668,017

***Peak of publ. for the year 2000………. 6,035,564 (-)

***Total "missing …" JW since 1961……. 2,632,453 (a)
========

(a) This figure represents 33.8% of all bapt. since 1962!
(of course it does include all the inactives, disf., diss.)
and those " sleeping in death "

- Since we do always give the average no. of baptized
ones, we can say, according to this record, that on
average there were 199,575 bapt. every year, for the
last 39 years , since 1962. We can also say that , on average
there were 67,498 bapt. JW " missing " every year for the
last 39 years !!!

Looking at this "factual data" the situation looks …slightly
different from the part written in the watchtower!

I hope to have made …simple, and I would welcome any
comments from you all.

Agape, J.C.MacHislopp

Moxy

all very well, but it doesnt negate the fact that the growth is there and that JWs are the only religion of any decent size to have had sustained growth during that entire period.

mox

stephenw20

Moxy,

this is a long period of time

hows the growth since 1995.....since the generation PASSED

joelbear

starting from such a small number it is easy to claim huge percentage gains.

Muslims are the fasted growing religion in the world in terms of sheer numbers probably adding 6 million a year, of course there percentage gains would be much smaller.

Witnesses play the number both ways.

Why are there so few Jehovah's Witnesses? Because narrow is the road leading to salvation.

Why are there so many Jehovah's Witnesses? Because Jehovah has poured out great blessings on his people.

If prosperity counts as Jehovah's blessing then Bill Gates is the most blessed of Jehovah.

thinker

Speaking of numbers, I visited a site which claimed there are now more Ex-JWs than active JWs. No actual figures were given to back up this statement, so I'm wondering; is it true? Can anyone here back this up?

MacHislopp

Hello thinker,

what about asking ...those in the site
where are the 2,632,453 JW missing since 1961??

Agape J.C.MacHislopp

RedhorseWoman

JWs are the only religion of any decent size to have had sustained growth during that entire period.

I'm not sure about sustained growth through the whole period, but I just recently read something that indicated that Mormonism is the fastest growing religion today with over 11,000,000 members. Guess they're also on the "A" list.

fodeja

I don't have the details right here, but most of that growth is what I'd call "horizontal". The JWs are spreading throughout the world, but they only get a very small market share in each country. They're filling their niche, but they cannot get beyond that (this is where JWs will inevitably start talking about the narrow road to salvation etc. ad nauseam :-)).

In most of the so-called Western world, the Witnesses haven't really grown that much since the pre-1975 explosion. The publishers-to-population ratio is usually in the range of 0.2-0.5%, and stagnating or falling. And of course, baptism has dropped _drastically_, in many first world countries, over the past 10 years. Growth is almost exclusively seen in poor, politically instable countries - USA and especially Europe are eroding (I wonder if that's the reason why they don't list individual countries' growth rates on www.watchtower.org any more?).

See http://www.jwic.com/stat.htm for some nice diagrams, there are also a couple of other statistics sites with focus on certain countries (e.g. http://www.redrival.com/wis/statistics.html , http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/6023/).

f.

Gianluca

Hello all,

How cqn someone say that the jw's have literally covered the earth with their witnessing.

What about China and India just to name them.....and all the muslim countries??

Ciao
Gianluca

joelbear

There is no witness work in Iran, Irag, Saudi Arabia, etc.

I guess people from Bangladesh and these countries basically have bad heart conditions and St. Helena is of course the most good hearted nation on earth.

hugs

Joel

*" .amazing growth, prosperity ..&qu...

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