If you did not wholeheartedly accept that 1975 was it, you were looked suspiciously by all the diehards.
1975—Were You Affected By What 1975 Was Supposed to Bring?
by minimus 73 Replies latest jw friends
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Bungi Bill
it was 1975 that got the ball rolling
That pretty much sums up my experience, too!
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zeb
Tameria2001
my sympathies to you as the pain of loss never leaves you.I just hope you are comforted by the memories you have of your sister.
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scary21
I also was from the doomed for destruction class. I was 21 in 1975. I lived in fear the years leading up to that year. I wanted to get as much out of life before my demise at the young age of 21 therefore I had sex, got pregnant , married and had a daughter all at 15-16.
That year 1975 really influenced my whole life and I'm still dealing with decisions made with 1975 in mind. That is why I am named Scary 21.........21 was a scary year for me.
Growing up with fear and guilt is no fun for children....and people feel sorry because we had no Holidays . They have NO IDEA !!!!!
Scary Sherry 21
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zeb
It was Mathew 24 v36 that kept me from going off the deep end re selling houses and the like so many did.
In later years I was amazed at the jw who didnt know that scripture but then why would the gb teach it;
1. It was the words of the Christ and
2. It blew a lot of wt dogma clean out of the water.
My sympathies to those whose lives were stuffed by the gb.
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Bungi Bill
Hi Zeb,
The bloody bastards thought they had that one covered, too.
An extract from the Watchtower of 15th August 1968 ("Why are you looking forward to 1975?") stated:
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)
Oh yeah, those that didn't swallow Crazy Fred's story about 1975 were indeed conspicuous by their silence during those years!
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nugget
I was 10 and spent the whole year in terror because my grandparents and father were not witnesses and I really believed they would die. I was so happy when 1976 came around.
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Half banana
It was an evening in August 1974, I was making a pine table (which I still use) and listening to the BBC while I worked. Who should be interviewed to defend the world's end in 1975? None other than our local bethelite David Sibrey. Anyone remember him? He talked of the flood as a divine pattern which he justified by childish garbage when his interlocutor questioned the historicity of such an event. I remember shaking my head even though I was a JW. Anyway, Sibrey a representative of official Watchtower thinking, was publicly a 'seventy fiver'.
At our circuit assembly later on in the same year, circuit overseer Albert Broad declared from the podium that if Armageddon does not happen by 1975 "Then Jehovah's Witnesses will be the laughing stock of the world".
They are--but they are non-entities, who cares about Jehovah's Witnesses?
It was the feeble 'apology' -- "Well we've still got our friends haven't we?"-- for the 1975 debacle in the 1979 Watchtower which accelerated my scepticism. Like a fool I still remained in the org for another ten years until defending the JW world view became intolerable.
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minimus
The watchtower apology was pretty simple. It’s all your fault not ours
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zeb
Some people took '75' it too far and 'ran ahead' so they say a bit like the Malawi situation where the thugs of Dr. Banda the country's leader went about doing the nasties to jw there because the jw refused to carry a party card (effectively an ID card). I recall the praise heaped on them who sold up and moved to pioneer.
Later elders trapped in a secretly recorded interview said the brothers in Malawi CHOSE to refuse the cards. Did they now. So it wasn't the branch offices direction then. Not what we were told at that time.
If the gb wished to stop the persecution in Malawi they could have done so in a phone call. But they didnt.
(15 yo jw girls in Mexico can celebrate their 15th birthday too, but Im getting picky)