WT history repeating?

by WasOnceBlind 17 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  WasOnceBlind

  I war reading an interesting research article about Charles Taze Russell and all of his financial dealings. This caught my eye:

  Charles Taze Russell and the WatchTower Society were in deep business distress after the "busted" October 1914 prophecy failure, and particularly after the "busted" October 1915 prophecy failure. Even Russell himself probably assumed that his decades-old "religion business" was all but finished. The "milk cows" were "dry", and the "sheep" had been completely "fleeced". Seeing no further use for many of the deadweights who surrounded him at Brooklyn Bethel, Russell began dismissing all but absolutely necessay staff from Watch Tower Society Headquarters -- even though the dismissed "volunteers" were receiving nothing but room, board, and a $10.00 / $11.00 monthly allowance. Even Russell's closest co-conspirator henchmen were hustling around looking for their next job.

  
  

  Wow, that sounds eerily familiar to what is going on now.
  

  Source: http://jwdivorces.bravehost.com/russell2.html
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  FayeDunaway

  Hrm....yes that's interesting!! let's just hope the WT doesn't take on an even nastier, more controlling form again, as it did under Rutherford!
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  OneEyedJoe

  Hrm....yes that's interesting!! let's just hope the WT doesn't take on an even nastier, more controlling form again, as it did under Rutherford!
  

  If it means that they lose 75% of their membership like what happened between 1914 and 1925, I think that's a bargain I'd be OK with. They'd never recover like they did the first time in this day and age.
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  sir82

  I sometimes think the current WTS is "ripe" for takeover by a forceful, arrogant, and charismatic leader like JFR.

  It is devolving into a cult of personality....and the personalities of the guys at the top are about as charismatic as lumps of clay.
  
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  Designer Stubble

  Interesting...thanks for sharing.
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  FayeDunaway

  Good points, joe and sir.

  I think the way they have it set up, some new member of the governing body would have to be that person. It would have to be some benign seeming leader type who had secret ambitions.

  They are really ripe for it.

  But also, the way they now manipulate people, maybe we wouldn't see a 75% drop off. There wasn't the same mentality back then. It wasn't really 'you must follow only us, or you DIE and Jehovah will HATE you' as it is now.
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  LoisLane looking for Superman

  @WasOnceBlind and everyone else, Wow. Such timely information.

  One hundred years ago. The First World War and all that went with it, helped garner more desperate people, looking for someone to tell them everything is alright, you will be alright and stick with WT and we will lead you to the Promised Land! It, of course was never true, but the poor injured 'sheep' were yearning for someone, anyone, to make sense of what they had gone through. Spin the wheel, where it stops, nobody knows. Catholic, Jew, Mormon, Baptist? Or, what about this new group that says the earth will SOON be a paradise and all wickedness will be done away with. They say so, and it is in print, so it must be true, right? Let's join them! And Russell and Rutherford and Knorr/Franz had it made. They preyed (notice preyed, not prayed) indifferently on these poor souls.

  This new group? hahahaha

  With this most wonderous time in history, the information highway is up and running so I cannot see the WT getting bigger. Their hope is in immigrants to first world countries, that are affected by the love bombing and the fantasy hope of, geez, I even hate to recall, the dream of everlasting life on a paradise earth, with your resurrected loved ones.

  What a false and shameful image to put out there for lonely, gullible, uneducated, innocent human beings.

  LoisLane
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  DATA-DOG

  I could save their religion, but they won't hire me.

  DD
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  Beth Sarim

  Probably the more eccentric two of the GB right now are either Lett or TOMO. Yeah, I can see the Borg morphing into an even crazier type with either of these two guys at the helm.
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  startingover

  Interesting information about what was happening in 1915. Goes along with what MacMillan stated in this letter he wrote to my grandfather in that same year.

  http://s241.photobucket.com/user/ikester_photo/media/mcmillan1915.jpg.html