Watchtower, What Happened to Famine? (AW 11/8/04)

by metatron 6 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  metatron

  Thirty years ago, the Watchtower Society was predicting that the world would soon

  fall apart ( Truth book, pg 89). In particular, they proclaimed that the world would be overcome

  with famine. They made frequent quotations from the book, "Famine 1975" and "experts"

  like Prof. Paul Ehrlich to the effect that nothing could be done to prevent entire nations from

  vanishing.

  "By 1975 civil disorder, anarchy, military dictatorships, runaway inflation, transportation

  breakdowns and chaotic unrest will be the order of the day in many of the hungry nations."

  Some of the "experts" they quoted advised "triage" in which various nations would be

  allowed to starve out of existence, without any aid offered.

  After all this gloom and doom, what does the Awake NOW say? (pg.3)

  "Overconsumption has replaced malnutrition as the world's top food problem"

  Even formerly starving China now complains that too many of its children are getting

  fat.

  Does the Society even 'wake up' to it's inability to prophecy its way out of a paper sack?

  Do they ever feel any shame over this course of deception?

  Answer: No

  You can read the Nov. 15, 2004 Watchtower for confirmation, page 23

  " Let us never urge fellow Christians who are pioneers, missionaries, traveling overseers,

  or members of the Bethel family to discontinue their full time service simply to return to

  a so-called normal life."

  In summary, we have the Watchtower Society:

  Never correct about the future

  But never in doubt, either.

  metatron
• 

  candidlynuts

  sadly famine is a real problem on earth. not to watchtower gloom and doom scale but way too many people (in the 10s of millions) are suffering

  edited to add.

  i was too low on my figures. http://www.bread.org/hungerbasics/international.html gives the figure at over 800 million.
• 

  Stephanus

  800m of 6bn people who are undernourished is not famine of the proportion that Erlich and his ilk were predicting in the 60s and 70s. He predicted that the earth's ability to feed the earth's growing population would be exhausted by the 1980s, based on experiments with butterflies. Butterflies breed to the level of food supply, exhaust it then start dying off. Trouble with that experiment is that humans aren't butterflies. We create resources, as well as consume them. And we are problem solvers. As the human population grew, our food supply grew faster, contrary to the Malthusian doomsayers' predictions. In 1960, the earth's population was 3bn and food production per head was about 2300 calories per day. Now, the population is just over double that, and food production per head is now 2900+ calories per day. Clearly Erlich's statement in the 1960s that "the battle to feed humanity is lost" is as accurate a prediction as any found in the Watchtowers of the time.

  However 800m undernourished people is still not good enough. Often the case with today's famines is not inability to produce food, but interference by govts. hostile to various tribal groups. Zimbabwe and Sudan are currently publicised examples.
• 

  Flash

  You can read the Nov. 15, 2004 Watchtower for confirmation, page 23

  " Let us never urge fellow Christians who are pioneers, missionaries, traveling overseers,

  or members of the Bethel family to discontinue their full time service simply to return to

  a so-called normal life."

  It's obvious that there is a problem they're trying to control here.

  In summary, we have the Watchtower Society:

  Never correct about the future

  But never in doubt, either.

  metatron

  Isn't that the truth! The WTS is always right until New Light cancels out their Old Light!
• 

  hillbilly

  How the hell would I know....any body wann grab a burger and a beer?

  Hill (keep on farmin class)
• 

  hillbilly

  How the hell would I know....any body wann grab a burger and a beer?

  Hill (keep on farmin class)
• 

  Quotes

  Good post metatron.
  
  However, you should know that WT already got new light on that preidiction in time for the reprinting of the TRUTH book:
  
  http://quotes.watchtower.ca/mini_tru.htm
  
  

  ---

  
  
  *** The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life (book) 1968 p.88-89 ch.10 God's Kingdom Comes to Power in the Midst of Its Enemies ***
  
  [As published in original 1968 edition]
  
  [Scan Available]
  
  11 During and after World War II widespread food shortages added to the distress. Shortly after the war Look magazine observed:
  
  "A fourth of the world is starving today. Tomorrow will even be worse. Famine over most of the world now is more terrible than most of us can imagine. . . . There are now more people hunting desperately for food than at any other time in history."
  
  More recently, the book entitled "Famine-1975!" [by W. & P. Paddock, 1967, pp. 52, 55, 61.] said concerning today's food shortages:
  
  "Hunger is rampant throughout country after country, continent after continent around the undeveloped belt of the tropics and subtropics. Today's crisis can move in only one direction - toward catastrophe. Today hungry nations; tomorrow starving nations.
  
  By 1975 civil disorder, anarchy, military dictatorships, runaway inflation, transportation breakdowns and chaotic unrest will be the order of the day in many of the hungry nations."
  
  [Emphasis Added]
  
  

  ---

  
  *** The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life (book) 1981 p.88-89 ch.10 God's Kingdom Comes to Power in the Midst of Its Enemies ***
  
  [As published in 1981 edition]
  
  11 During and after World War II widespread food shortages added to the distress. Shortly after the war Look magazine observed:
  
  "A fourth of the world is starving today. Tomorrow will even be worse. Famine over most of the world now is more terrible than most of us can imagine. . . . There are now more people hunting desperately for food than at any other time in history."
  
  More recent reports have shown that a constant lack of adequate food, resulting in chronic malnutrition, has become the "major world hunger problem today." The London Times reported:
  
  "There have always been famines, but the scale and ubiquity [presence everywhere] of hunger today is on a totally new scale. . . . Today malnutrition is said to affect more than a thousand million people; perhaps as many as 400 million live constantly on the brink of starvation."-June 3, 1980.
  
  [Emphasis Added]
  
  

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  ~Quotes, of the "wish those 800 million could have a decent meal" class