What Comes After the Watchtower Collapse?

by schnell 41 Replies latest jw experiences

• 

  Cold Steel

  (Hail, Hydra!)

  What makes you think the WTS is on the verge of collapse? Didn't the Organization just lay off some people (not the GB, but the "great crowd" -- it's all prophesied.) But if they got into real financial trouble, couldn't they just tap the faithful?

  "Dear brothers and sisters, as Armageddon looms ever closer, Satan the Devil seeks to sift his Organization among the chaff. And he has done it through our funding. Already children are starving, dying from drought, unheard of pestilence, and your beloved Governing Body occasionally having to fly coach. To those of you with means, we ask you to reach deep into your pockets (even those of you who may be suffering discipline...okay, shunning, we said it. We were only joking. We always hurt the ones we love. We welcome you back in all faith and fellowship and ask that you be given the opportunity, a rare blessing, to help fill our coffers! And we rebuke...yes REBUKE the short-sighted elders who did this to you! We've often said in the pages of the Watchtower that shunning was wrong. So please remember us. Promote us with skits and by distributing a new line of videos entitled, The Bunker Girl and Armageddon and Anointed Bunker Girl Comes Home! Also by buying the new anatomically correct Bunker Girl action figure. So give, and the Windows of Heaven will bless you! Signed, GB."

  See? Just that easy.

  
  
• 

  schnell

  "Hey guys! So, a lot of you know about our recent lawsuits. LOL embarrassing, right?! Well we need some money now, we've done our downsizing and such, we're paying our legal fees, etc. etc. And ya know what else? It may surprise you that we have a means to protect our investment at Walkill which so many of you invested your time and energy and money into... We have to pay some contractors back for a remote control lake. Hurricanes, amirite?!"
• 

  smiddy

  Its wishful thinking schnell , think of the Assemblys of God religion , started by Herbert W.Armstrong , and the Plain Truth magazine that was freely given out to anybody who wanted one.A high gloss magazine at that putting the WT to shame .Long before the WT was virtually made to give them away for free.

  And very similar to WT teachings about the End Times and daniels prophecys and Armageddon

  They went through a tumultous time some years ago , and actually came out and apologised to their members for getting things wrong and re-invented themselves under a new name and are still going strong.although with a reduced membership .

  The IBSA started by C.T.Russell , re-invented themselves under J.F.Rutherford and became Jehovahs Witnesses , dont be surprised if a future leader of the now existing JW religion again re-invent themselves into something else when things dont turn out the way the are now predicting.And you can bet your bottom dollar they will still have followers.
• 

  DesirousOfChange

  These kinds of schemes keep popping up because there are buyers out there.

  "There's a sucker born every minute" ~ DAVID HANNUM
  
• 

  Half banana

  Further to your though DOC, "Nobody went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people," someone said...

  The leaders of the Watchtower cult have a lifelong tradition of total prophetic failure but are equipped with with a mind bending propaganda machine to feed the minds of their unquestioning flock. JWs are willing slaves in a cult which gives them nothing in return but a worthless and spurious hope.

  The amazing survival of this failed cult is by careful manipulation of the misplaced trust in the hype given out by the governing body that they alone are the channel to God, the one and only divinely inspired religion.
  

  With the unholy internet bringing real enlightenment to the JW wobblers and the more alert public; the numbers of JWs should level off and then decline.

  Christianity is a delusion in the first place (no God-man, Jesus or otherwise, is ever going to save even one person from death---and Adamic sin is a myth!) If Christianity is a con and has lasted for over sixteen centuries, what chance is there of an abrupt end to the JW cult which is just one of the forty thousand variations cashing in on "absolute truth"?

  However, towers if built on bad foundations, can and do fall suddenly.................
• 

  redvip2000

  As "the money going out far outweighs the money coming in",

  There is no evidence that this is even happening. You forget that the Org has very little overhead. Not only does it not pay taxes, but i also don't see how it could be losing money. The fact that they are trimming down, could mean that revenue was lower as of late, but this does not equate to losing money. They have a massive army of salespeople who work for free, give them money and pay their own expenses.

  The new HQ, although expensive to build will save them money in the long-run with lower taxes, combining expenses like maintenance in one facility versus many buildings, etc. They are doing the same by combining branches. Could well be that their net revenue could now be higher.
  

  They have just shifted their business model from voluntary donations, to pseudo-tithing, so they won't need to do as much begging as before, just remind folks of the tithing arrangement.
  
• 

  jws

  I looked online a bunch of years ago. Maybe around 1995 and found out there were still Bible Students. Now online and with online copies of "Studies in the Scriptures" online too.

  I was shocked in the way I am to still encounter flat-earthers. I thought surely they'd have grown beyond Russel's teachings too. The JWs were bad enough, but even they gave up on most of those teachings.

  So it might take several decades for JWs to finally expire, if ever.

  A friend was involved with another religious cult that had some really bad management and fell apart. Similar to JWs, but with Pentecostal overtones. I'm not sure whether there's an "official" organization anymore, but most of the home bible study groups went independent.
  
  Hard to say though. These groups had some books and magazines, but they still survived afterwards.
  
  JWs? They've been so trained to get the latest and greatest and ignore the old. Without a constant influx of new material, I'm not sure they know how to handle that. They're used to giving up on books that are 10, 20 years old. if the WTBTS collapses and there are no more books, will they touch the old ones? And what if there are no more books to preach with? Will they still preach even?
  
  So much of their organization depends on the top, I don't know that they can function without it.
• 

  Lee Elder

  Freedom, and celebration for the most part.
  
• 

  steve2

  think of the Assemblys of God religion , started by Herbert W.Armstrong
  

  Smiddy, perhaps a mix up here. Armstrong started the "Worldwide Church of God" not the Assemblies of God churches which have an entirely different development and history.
  
• 

  blondie

  This reminds me of the opposite of the spectrum where jws try to guess what it will be like in the new system and do so in detail.