Yeah, definitely. But in another way I am also left asking where it went.
I lost touch with all things Watchtower after leaving it behind in the 1980s/early '90s. I started to live my life without thinking about it at all. Years went by even.
Then 2014 came and a JW came to my door (I moved across country after leaving and hadn't seen a Witness in about 20 years). When they offered me literature I realized who they were and asked: "It's 2014. You folks are still around?"
So, yeah, to that degree I am amazed. I told some JWs on the day I left that the end was not coming, that if they didn't wake up soon that it would suddenly be 2014 and still there would be no Armageddon.
"Oh, this world will never last till then," they said. "You can bet on that! It won't even last till 2000, you'll see! By 2014 we'll be way deep into the New World Society and you will be dead!"
When that JW knocked on my door that hot June Saturday morning in 2014, I almost wanted to laugh in their face mockingly. But I reminded myself that this was not the same person from my past who told me such foolishness about the world ending before the year 2000.
I've since tried to look on their new website and just got a headache reading and seeing a few things. So much has changed! This is not the religion I left.
Two overlapping groups making up the "generation" of 1914? Huh? How did they even settle on the number two? Where in the Holy Bible do they get just "two" overlapping groups? Why not more? How does it overlap?
And a video ministry? In my day we called televised preaching a tool of Satan! And the dumbed-down picture books they now use as "spiritual food"?! We used to teach that such basic, dumbed-down publications in Christendom were proof that they were suffering a spiritual famine! And when I left there was like about 8000 of the anointed remnant. But the "remnant" has now since doubled?!?!
This is not the Jehovah's Witnesses anymore. That religion ended when Franz died and the year 2000 came without the end of the world coming.
What you have now is some other new cult that they slyly snuck in under all these poor, unsuspecting saps. The religion I belonged to did end. It ended when the 1914 generation from that 1980s Watchtower magazine cover all died and Franz kicked the bucket. In my day the only way Brooklyn Bethel was going to be emptied is when the last burning ember from heaven fell upon and slaughtered the last worldly person (and then it was probably going to be used as the capital buildings of the New World Society). And now look!
I am astonished at what has taken its place, but also satisfied that the cult I was in did disappear. If instead of leaving when I did, I had but merely fell into a coma, waking up today--I would be disfellowshiped for believing in false doctrine and practicing a false religion....the one I learned from the blue Truth book and the red Live Forever book.
The Jehovah's Witnesses and their New World Society ended. That cult finally collapsed. I don't know what this "JW.org" is, but we would have called them apostates and a group blinded by Satan in my day!
David Jay Cohen--March of 2017.
