I just love this picture that I saw on a post from yesterday. I am the guy in the middle. My wife and her family are under the umbrellas. I told my wife that the meetings are so depressing with all of the gloom and doom. For over 40 years the theme of the meetings has been the end is so close so don't buy any green bananas and if you aren't a JW you will die at Armageddon.
I remember sitting in the hot sun at the summer district assembly in 1974. The highlight of all assemblies back in the day was the last talk on Sunday afternoon. The entire audience was on pins and needles just chomping at the bit, eager for news about next year 1975. We all were waiting for what the speaker would say about next years assemblies. Finally the speaker got to the point and we all held our breath. "Next year, If it be Jehovah's will, we have district assemblies." Right then I knew I had been scammed.
For years 7 out of 10 public talks on Sunday have 30% of the beginning of the talk cover just how terrible world conditions are with lots of details on the number of murders, rapes, wars, starvation, etc. It is just so depressing, but fear not the answer is God's Kingdom which will soon, just around the corner soon, take place and our loving God will destroy 99.9% of the worlds population. But don't feel bad, the wicked were given ample warning. Remember how the householder was offered the Watchtower and Awake by a pimpley faced teenager, and they refused the magazine. (had no interest in rock gardens or the benefits of fresh oranges.) How many times did they have a witness when we walked in their neighborhoods. They hid from us and peaked out of they blinds, but we knew and Jehovah knew they were there. They see us standing by our carts with our literature and yet they still refuse to become a part of God's loving earthy organization.
The meetings are more joyless than the waiting room in a hospital emergency waiting room. I have never seen so many people rejoice when something bad happens, proving the end is near. Don't you just love it when there is an earthquake and 5,000 people die and what gets mentioned from the platform, "we are sorry to say that 5 witnesses died and three kingdom halls were destroyed."
I just hope that more and more witnesses wake up and be like me without the umbrella.
Sour Grapes
