What would Watchtower be like now with out the 1975 fiasco.

joe134cd

No doubt this has been discussed before, but if the 1975 event had never happened where would watchtower be now. Comments please.

it would have 10s of thousand less members, because there was a huge boost through sincere jws taken wt pronouncements seriously. It also steeled the deceived ones against further wt mayhem like the overlapping.

wt will never shake the stigma of being false speculating prophets, putting up trial balloons, being loons.

KiwiBoy

It is QUITE possible that I would still be with them singing their praises. Maybe. But that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I had so much invested in that buildup and it destroyed my faith even though I had doubts before. However it is what it is so they say...it was and here we are all these years later. So yes it may have been a different landscape had it not happened. But looking back they went down that track so many times in the past, so I am not surprised that it happened all over again. Each time a lot suffered never to return. History is a great teacher!

Pete Zahut

Their credibility would be in better shape and their faces wouldn't be as red.

Finkelstein

Probably about the same .

1975 was a small blip in the overall history of the WTS.

One of the many strategic scams the WTS used in promoting that Jesus had returned in 1914 and that " This " generation was about to see the Great Tribulation and Armageddon.

Bullshit lies presented with righteous virtue in intent.

slimboyfat

I doubt half the people in my local congregation would be there today if it wasn't for 1975. Whenever you ask most of them were baptised in 1973, 1974, or 1975, and studied the blue Truth book.

Whatever went down in the mid 1970s it must have been pretty exciting, I kind of wish I had been around to see it. Ha!

steve2

The growth of JWs was sliding down. Y the mid-1960s -after nearly two decades of phenomenal growth rates. 1975 both breathed new life and took its toll of the organization as few events in the latter 20th century ever had.

A more fascinating question is whether Chuck Russell's movements - including especially the Bible Students - would have ever gained momentum and currency had the Great War not erupted in 1914.

jwfacts

1975 turned out to be a great marketing ploy. It is a bit like giving away a free trial, the ones to leave don't matter, what matters is that you end up with more customers than if you hadn't given the free trial.

The tremendous growth pre-1975 was far greater than the number that left, and the children of those converts are the elders and parents of many of the current crop of followers.

Get them in at any cost, and then let the indoctrination do it's work to keep as many in as possible.

karter

There was alot of growth pre 75 then in 1976 N.H.Knoor went on a world wide tour to shore up the masses as the number started to go down.

I went to his talk at the Auckland New Zealand Town hall,He spoke for 90 mins with out notes,Looking back i'm sure he had given that talk so many times he didn't need to.

It took a long time to recover from 75 and they gave a sort of very vague apology in a Watchtower in 1982 that by now they will be denying.

Karter.

stuckinarut2

Many of us born-ins in the 30-45 age bracket wouldn't be here either!

Our parents were attracted into the society around the time we were born, and our lives were instantly set in witness-motion