I was there in the KH, in August, 1966 (22 years old) when the congregation overseer (my uncle) came back from the assembly in Vancouver, BC with the book, "Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God." He delivered a special talk that Sunday based on the book and its promise.
Opening the book to its fateful page, he read to the congregation all about how 1975 represented the end of 6,000 years of human history, and "we all know what that means"; wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
It was accepted as absolute truth, this teaching that Armageddon was coming - and soon. When we'd go out peddling WT publications we would choose which house we wanted to take over when its current occupants had been consumed by the birds of the heavens. Of course, it was the fancy, half-million dollar homes we wanted. Materialistic to the end. And past.
Passing by a football stadium, one congregation servant wondered out loud what we were going to use that for after armageddon. "We ain't gonna play no more football?" I asked in my best redneck imitation.
This prophecy wasn't presented in the nature of a suggestion, either. You HAD to believe it. It was not optional. If you openly questioned the prophecy, or dared question the wisdom of announcing D-Day for public consumption, you were considered weak, and you might have a group of "older glorious men, the luminous, numinous, brilliant wise ones" who lit up in the dark all by themselves come to your house to "adjust" your thinking. I mean, it was a BIG DEAL to express any doubt about the Jay-Dub's teachings on this little matter. A very big deal.
We were actually supposed to go out in our territories and preach this stuff door to door. I think that's when the practice of dropping off an old WT at the Waffle House while playing with your food for two hours started. Anything but having to look someone in the face and saying "The End is Near." Just couldn't do it.
One overseer I knew in Savannah, GA went out in 1973 and borrowed fifty thousand dollars against his home since he knew he wouldn't have to pay it back. He took his family on a world cruise. And he died in 1978 a broken man, still owing the bulk of the fifty large, and dumber than a box of rocks.
My best friend at the time decided not to go to college since the "end was so near" and he still works a minimum-wage job with his GED accomplishment to this very day. He did get married, but swore he wouldn't have children "this side of armageddon." He did. And struggled to raise this child on his munificent income. And he's an elder today.
Another elder got a vanity license plate on his car that read "1975".
I went on with my plans to go to college - against the advice of every elder I knew. I was looked at askance because I wasn't buying the party line. Heretic, doncha know.
The society hedged its bets on its prediction that the game would be up in '75. But there were enough tell-tale statements from the society to hang it high when it tried to deny what it had done. Comments in the Kingdom Ministry about how the new world would be coming in a matter of months, not years. And many other comments of the ilk, like commenting on a couple who had sold their home and entered the missionary service, "...what a fine way to spend in the short time remaining in this old system of things."
Of course, when the, um, ship hit the sand, the Borg did what all abusers do, it blamed the victim, you and I and all the other every-day publishers at the time. I mean, when you're directed by God, you can't admit you engaged in false prophecy, now can you?
This bad, bad failure of judgement was characterised by the WTB&TS later as, "a natural enough mistake to make." NATURAL ENOUGH mistake? Hold on just a chicken-pluckin', pickle-packin', kipper strippin' minute. The Borg says they're the only channel of, well, you know. And now they're making natural enough mistakes? Lotsa "ifs" in their explanations as I remember. Hell, if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon; if a frog had wings it wouldn't bump its ass so much, if a...
Anyway, there's what I remember right off the point of my head. There's much more, but this is a family bulletin board.
I'm about to fall over face down into my keyboard, so I'm gonna quit now (applause) and hit the saque.
Francoise
