Greetings,
the growth of Jehovah's Witnesses over the last 20-30 years has to be considered in the context of a number of factors including, doctrinal direction and general sociological considerations.
By doctrinal direction I mean simply this: taking the past few decades at a time, during each period there was within the structure of the JW theology a FIRM TIME OF EXPECTATION of "the end." (In fact one could argue that this has always been so since Russell's date setting) but picking up with the early 70' s there was the 1975 Date of course.
In the 80's after the Great Purging of Bethel that occurred at the turn of the decade, the WT rhetoric shifted noticeably to the "hardline" and this coupled with the (perceived) Cold War tensions and other global political conflicts, led the Society to really push the End is Near cry including of course, strong statements with regard to the Generaltion Doctrine, which carried well into the 90's. (Add to this growing concerns that arose thanks to Rachel Carson over the environment, terrorism, the economy, etc.)
However, when the Society had to abandon the Generation Doctrine and having acquiesed to the pursuit of Higher Education for its members, and most importantly, the communications explosion of the Internet (WWW), the Revolution has already begun, unbeknownst to the majority of those associated with JWs.
Already, the Society has admitted for several years that the expected growth in the US and similar lands where the truth has been preached for some time are experiencing minimal growth, essentially nothing other than present family members of JWs (and my suspicion is that even these are coming in in less and less numbers as the youngsters are exposed to counter-JW information via the Net).
The only growth to speak of is coming in new lands where the witnesses are relatively a new religion and in reality this growth is quite minimal.
Because we are for the first time within JWs at a point of Dogmatic Drift and without any Firm Endtime, the rallying call in the most general sense of "Last Days" is all that JWs have left and this amorphous motivation is very unlikely to sustain any growth or even the present membership for any appreciable period of time.
No, as we eventually reach the inevitable point in time when all of the ANOINTED are supposed to have left this Earth, big changes within the JW religion will necessarily take place.
Beginning, some time next year I will be launching my own website: Jehovahs-Witnesses.net, where I will be expanding on some of what I have mentioned in this post and much more.
In the mean time,
Welcome, to the Revolution!
Eduardo
