JR Brown's comments reflect the new face of the organization, in times past old timers at bethel would have answered that question with a resounding:
"HELL YEA WE BE THE ONLY ONE TO MAKE IT" but in the last few years the influence of the Legal Dept can clearly be seen in all comments and published material from the society-
the answer is truly and excellent answer to the question , esp if the goal is not to ruffle feathers of non-jw - his answer would not be threatening to any hearer, for most religion of the christian faith hold this positions, rarely would you find a main stream religion saying
if you aint a baptist you will not make it, instead most belief system unlike in the days when they were founded many times have soften thier positions on salvation
about the only ones left of the christian format are Born Again persons- they usuall will tell you hell is a waiting if you don't get born again,
but you avg methodist, baptist, luthern, etc will rarely call down fire and brimstone on those who don't share their belief system- so we see wt doing pretty much the same thing- watching a religion grow and develope is amazing- i look back at my own life exp, when i was a kid, voting, alternative service, playing sports in school, my mom going shopping for christmas stuff for my non-jw dad were NO NO,
YET WT has shifted it's position for survial- now while i agree the avg jw still believes that only he will be saved- the position of JR Brown would have been unthinkable when rutherford and the boys used to picket in front of churches on sunday morning-
will the avg jw one day feel like a run of the mill baptist that all roads lead to salvation, i don;t know-
but today the avg jw in my view doesn't have the BACKBONE that i saw growing up- we would walk on to our jobs and annouce: "I"M a Damn JW and don't F*CK with me"
but today many jw will not even ID themselves as such- case in point we have a new Network Engineer on our site and he is a JW i saw his bloodcard in his wallent one day last week when we all went out for lunch and he has not witnessed to us-
he kinda played off the christmas party by PRETENDING THAT THERE WERE SOME SERVER ISSUES and since he was the new man he would stay behind to monitor it- I KNEW HE LIED-
EACH MONTH we have birthday cake and last month he tried to say He can't eat chocolate - YEA RIGHT he was suppose to be telling everyone about getting their head cut off
i have not busted him yet and he has no idea that the fellow network team HATES JW smile-
well time will tell