I thought I would never do this again, but a comment on this article made to look it up. Not much knew but looking back at previous articles, the WTS has ramped up on this topic since 2020...I see a correlation there. It is lengthy so I will split it up in parts. I have not taken the time to quote much from WT publications but I have given places where it can be looked up without triggering yourself reading it. It has been a challenge for me and I am using my experiences over the last 60 years to give a insight in the WTS process. Based on a previous comment on the July Study Article, I printed it out to see what “new” info was in there, “Are You Ready for the Great Tribulation.”. I was associated with the WTS during the time many updates were made about what, when, and who and why were made.
Can a jw be ready if the interpretation has changed many times over the years? Especially older jws that have not noticed the changes and cling to the old ones. This article “might” clear that up.
The timing of this article is not surprising with the COVID-19 pandemic and many jws individually, thinking this was IT, especially with KHs closing and the door to door being stopped. (Some might remember when the Twin Towers came down in 2001, many jws fled back to the KH thinking IT was then).
I have often here and other ex-jw sites used this scripture to prove that no one could predict when the GT would come. But once again the WTS leaves out part of the scripture making it what I call a “snippet” used to distract readers from “Jesus” words. Matthew 24:44 (RNWT) On this account, you too prove yourselves ready,+ because the Son of man is coming at an hour that you do not think to be it.
Some jws pre-1975 response to this was that the “hour” was not know but the year was. As to being ready, does anyone remember the fiasco after Hurricane Katrina, when many jws especially including elders were not prepared, even to not having vital personal info on members to get in contact with them. Shortly after that, the WTS developed directions for the elders and members how to prepare for events like that. To the point, the WTS and its members were caught with their pants down.
But even if a jw is prepared for it, the WTS says they would “most likely survive.” Many jws don’t realize the WTS has said very often, the “as a group” baptized, faithful jws will survive, not guaranteeing individual jws will survive, suggesting people with diabetes that could not refrigerate their insulation during the GT might die, but not by execution by their god through the angels.
· How many jws remember when the WTS taught that after the GT started, that jws will not longer being going door to door to get people to listen, study, and get baptized as a jw? The WTS said jws would then be preaching a “hard-hitting judgment.” November 2022 WT “Doing so gives us the inner strength we need to preach the Kingdom message now and to proclaim the hard-hitting judgment message that we may deliver in the near future. May 2022 WT “That coalition of nations will make one final all-out assault on God’s people. What will provoke the attack? Speaking of this time, the apostle John saw a storm of unusually large hailstones raining down on God’s enemies. That symbolic hailstorm may take the form of a hard-hitting judgment message delivered by Jehovah’s people. It could be that this message provokes Gog of Magog into attacking God’s people with the intention of wiping them off the earth and 11/15/1981 WT p. 21So this pictures how, at the end, Jehovah’s judgment message sent down upon disobedient mankind will be like a barrage of hard-hitting hail.
· WT 8/15/1967 p.503, and add this “
The time will come when circumstances will no longer permit a successful flight (start of GT my words)t, namely, at the destruction of Babylon the Great and the succeeding war of Armageddon.—Rev. 16:14 to 17:18. (Paragraphs 1-4) Next Installment soon