Since Brooklyn finally allowed the 1914 generation to die in 1995, the “distributing apparatus” of the multinational printing organization has been starting to slow down.
“Service” is down, the numbers of pioneers are decreasing, the number of baptized show an alarming drop and people are leaving in their thousands.
After many decades of incessant harping on how Jehovah, Jesus and the Bible had guaranteed that the END would be over before the 1914 generation was dead, the Witnesses had the only thing that kept many of them going, ripped out from under their noses. Suddenly Jehovah hadn’t promised any such thing in the Awake! Suddenly Jesus had never been talking about the “length” of a generation, as usual the Watchtower had never said any such thing, someone had “speculated” about the generation.
Since 1995, this development have caused great concern in Brooklyn and in their typical fashion they try to “deal” with it the only way they know. As an act of caution in case the year 1975 should become a failure, the Watchtower Society had the foresight to print an article with the title:
*** w74 6/15 375 Serve with Eternity in View ***
This would come in handy afterwards, but of course they didn’t want to kill the feverish frenzy in the Witness population so they had to remind them of how close the end was:
*** w74 6/15 378-9 Serve with Eternity in View ***
18 And it is the same today among true Christians who realize from the fulfillment of Bible prophecy that the end of this entire wicked system of things is near at hand. True, the most accurate Bible chronology available indicates that 6,000 years of human existence will end in the mid-1970’s. So these Christians are intensely interested to see if that will coincide with the outbreak of the “great tribulation” of our day that will eliminate all wicked ones on earth. It could. But they are not even attempting to predict exactly when the destruction of Satan’s wicked system of things will occur. They are content to wait and see, realizing that no human on earth knows the date.—Matt. 24:36.
As we can see they also dusted off Matt: 24: 36, a scripture they really didn’t wanted to be fobbed off with a few years earlier:
*** w68 8/15 500-1 Why Are You Looking Forward to 1975? ***
This is not the time to be toying with the words of Jesus that “concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matt. 24:36) To the contrary, it is a time when one should be keenly aware that the end of this system of things is rapidly coming to its violent end. Make no mistake, it is sufficient that the Father himself knows both the “day and hour”!
Anyway, after the 1975 fiasco about a million Jehovah's Witnesses left the movement and of course Brooklyn could dismiss them with having the “wrong motives” they didn’t “Serve with Eternity in View”, so there! The removal of the last “carrot” in the Watchtower arsenal, the “1914 generation”, has made hundreds of thousands of Witnesses realize how unreliable the Watchtower Society is and has of course also showed how much they had really hoped that there was something in that drivel about the 1914 generation. After several decades of yelling about the generation, having stretched it beyond any limit, they now had to switch tune. The bottom line is, the Witness community do not function very well if they don’t have some concrete time span to relate to. The end can come any day now do not sit very well with them, not in the long run anyway. Screaming “wolf” several times a day have a very disastrous effect on ones credibility in the long run. How then can Brooklyn try to whip the lethargic Witness community into action again? Well, they can try the age old tactic, manipulate by guilt. Feel bad about our false preaching and promises about the 1914 generation? You ungrateful wimps! You had the wrong motive you pathetic losers,! You didn’t “Serve with Eternity in View”! Here is what it sounds like today:
*** w99 7/15 18 Anchored by Hope, Impelled by Love ***
Still others scuttle their ship of faith because in their view the haven of the new system of things does not yet seem to be appearing on the horizon. Unable to make time calculations concerning the fulfillment of certain prophecies, and putting “Jehovah’s day” off in their minds, they abandon true worship. (2 Peter 3:10-13; 1 Peter 1:9) They soon find themselves back in the murky, troubled waters of the present system of things. (Isaiah 17:12, 13; 57:20) Some who have stopped associating with the Christian congregation still believe that it practices the true religion. However, they evidently lack the patience and endurance required to wait for the new world that Jehovah God has promised. Life in Paradise has not come soon enough for them.
This article do of course not deal with why the R&F Witnesses came to harbor such “expectations” in the first place. Who put the ideas of the possibility of making any “calculations concerning the fulfillment of certain prophecies” in the first place? Do we see any discussion about that in this article? Of course not.
Has it ever occurred to Brooklyn that there might be other reasons for people to leave the Watchtower organization? Maybe they “lack the patience and endurance” for being lied to for so many years? How can Brooklyn expect anything else but a strong desire for life in a “paradise” when they spoon-feed their poor gullible followers with their doom and gloom picture of life. Almost every aspect of life has improved tremendously since 1914, all over the world, yet we see totally and horribly false claims like this in the Watchtower magazine:
*** w98 11/15 19-20 Walking With God-With Eternity in View ***
17 Though we serve God with eternity in view, we still keep Jehovah’s day close in mind. The fulfillment of Bible prophecy eloquently testifies to the nearness of that day. This century has been characterized by wars, pestilences, earthquakes, and food shortages, along with the persecution of true Christians and the global preaching of the good news of God’s Kingdom. All of these are features of the time of the end of this wicked system of things.
When the Watchtower Society had to abandon their last “calculation” that provided the Witnesses with some kind of dateline, they probably didn’t foresee problems of the magnitude they have now. They had and might still have the confidence that they can manipulate and lie their way through this mess too, and they might still pull it off.
Thinking isn’t the most popular activity in the Witness community. So Brooklyn continue to harp on about the rotten “motives” those who have “slowed down” have:
*** w99 7/15 18 Anchored by Hope, Impelled by Love ***
9 A few dedicated Christians in some parts of the world appear to have reefed the sails of their ship of faith. The ship is still afloat, but instead of forging ahead in full faith, they have adopted a cruising speed. Drawn by the hope of “Paradise soon,” some were prepared to spare no efforts to attain it—zealous in the preaching work and regular in attendance at all meetings, assemblies, and conventions. Now thinking that the realization of their hopes is farther off than they anticipated, they have lowered the price they are willing to pay. This is evident in reduced preaching activity, irregularity at meetings, and willingness to miss parts of assembly or convention programs. Others are devoting more time to recreation and to obtaining material comforts. These facts lead us to consider what should be the driving force in our lives in line with our dedication to Jehovah. Should our zeal in his service be dependent on the hope of “Paradise soon”?
All of this boils down to having a life. You can’t expect to be a Jehovah's Witnesses and have a normal life! You can’t live your life when you are actually living. You have to forget everything else and spread Watchtower literature all over the place, having a life? That comes in the “paradise” that we have promised you so many times, and which have proved to be false, but you are an ungrateful bugger, because Jehovah want your “service” for eternity! This ought to be enough for you!
The question asked in the last sentence above is: “Should our zeal in his service be dependent on the hope of “Paradise soon”?” This they have the nerve to ask, after having made the “paradise soon” their foremost cause for over 120 years now.
What a hypocritical bunch of pathetic liars they are. Then the Watchtower continues:
*** w99 7/15 19-20 Anchored by Hope, Impelled by Love ***
13 A Christian will not progress toward the new system if his only motive for serving Jehovah is the hope of living forever on a paradise earth. While keeping his anchor of hope as a stabilizing factor in his life, he needs to add to it and to his faith the impelling force of love. Paul underscored this fact when he wrote: “There remain faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”—1 Corinthians 13:13.
14 Our motivating force in rendering sacred service should be heartfelt love for Jehovah, in response to his immeasurable love for us. The apostle John wrote: “He that does not love has not come to know God, because God is love. By this the love of God was made manifest in our case, because God sent forth his only-begotten Son into the world that we might gain life through him. As for us, we love, because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:8, 9, 19) Out of gratitude to Jehovah, our primary concern should be, not to gain personal salvation, but to witness the sanctification of his holy name and the vindication of his righteous sovereignty.
As many of us realize when the Watchtower Society use the expression “Love” we become very weary, because whatever they define as love, has never much to do with the concept of love as we know it. Jehovah's Witnesses and Christians in general talk a lot about love and in particular about how loving God is supposed to be. The God of the Watchtower we are told is soon to be wiping out 99,9% of mankind – over 6 billion people. When Hitler killed 6 million Jew’s and Stalin wiped out untold millions of his countrymen, do we think about this as acts of love? Has anyone, but devout Nazi’s or devout communists ever described those two as loving? When Milosevic tried to wipe out the Albanian population in Kosovo, was anybody suggesting that this was out of love? Yet Jehovah's Witnesses, which look so much forward to their forever elusive “paradise” doesn’t seem to have any problems with the fact that in order for this paradise to become reality 6 + billion people will be exterminated. They even call it “Jehovah’s Wonderful Purpose for Mankind”. Doesn’t that tell us quite a lot about the fact that the Watchtower Society and Jehovah's Witnesses don’t have a clue about what LOVE is?
If Jehovah have to butcher 6 billion people to “sanctify” his name, what kind of a sanctification is that, other than the worst butcher in the universe? Are the names of the worst mass murderers in the history of mankind “sanctified” in any way?
Aren’t they remembered with disgust and loathing? With a God like that what is left to do for the Devil? What evil deed could he possibly come up with that would top the cruelty of God? If this is the way God show his much hyped “love”, who needs it?
Norm.