Awake Moving To Monthly Publishing

by Valis 98 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Pole

  what_truth
  
  So you'd bet just as much money on the New System as you would on the gradual decay of the WT? :)
  
  Pole
• 

  TresHappy

  Published Monthly? How about Published Century?
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  what_Truth?

  Yes Pole i actually would. I don't beleive either will happen within our lifetime. Any business with 6 million regular customers is pretty impressive to begin with. The WTS however has 6 million regular customers that not only buy its good but beleive it's God's will to sell these goods to others. It's also run by a board of directors who have pulled their company through Nazi persecution, bannings, medical lawsuits, the 1914, 1918, 1935, and 1975 fallouts, and countless other obsticles much more damning than some child abuse cases and internet spawned disillusionment.
  
  I mean how many other doomsday cults last for 130 years? You have to be freakin Brilliant to pull that one off. The best we can do is continue to expose them to people looking to join and help ease the dissillusioned in their ranks. They aren't going away any time soon.
• 

  DaCheech

  We need the service and school meeting cut out now!
• 

  Elsewhere

  I emailed my sister asking about this... she responded that she has not heard anything about it.

  My email should make a great witness when she finds out that I knew something before it was announced at the KH.

  Thank you Valis... District Over Beer.
• 

  Poztate

  Harry Peloyan, is finally getting too feeble (physically, I mean) to keep going.

  Don't try and kid me.Anybody that can keep publishing this sh@t for years and believes it has a few brain cells missing too.

  The Awake will become a monthly magazine offered to the outside world. They may put more actual religious material in it, but geared for public consumption. The Watchtower will become an "internal only" publication where they can put all those articles about "stay close to the organization or be shunned" out of the public eye.

  Jeff T ...I think you nailed it.No one at the doors wants the WT.All the articles in it are only used for group indoctrination.The "new awake" might be a way to slowly convert the unwary to the cult.
• 

  steve2

  You have to be freakin Brilliant to pull that one off. The best we can do is continue to expose them to people looking to join and help ease the dissillusioned in their ranks. They aren't going away any time soon.

  I have another view of this: History is replete with dooms-day religions that have pretty much adapted to the uncomfortable fact that the end still hasn't come. Look at the various Adventists groups and the Mormons who, in the early stages were singularly focused on end-times teachings.

  In more recent times, there was an organisation called the Worldwide Church of God that had a vast printing empire. I can't remember the name of the magazine they used to send - often unsolicited - through the post. They claimed there print run was in the millions. The founder was someone by the name of Armstrong. He was a very emphatic man who made a lot of confident predictions about when the end of the world would come. Like the Witnesses, with whom he shared many similar beliefs, his heyday was the 1970s. Since his death, his empire just folded.

  I wouldn't be surprised if, despite the JWs longevity, the organisation loses steam quite quickly. There's no rule that says because a group was tenacious and persistent in the past, it will take longer to fade away. The tenacity and persistence may have been common feature in decades past, but anyone who has rubbed shoulders with the current breed of JWs will be less easily convinced that they have what it takes to persist in the face of a world that refuses to end.
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  DaCheech

  Amen!

  Modern witnesses (see Cali thread) are very adapted to the "world". And just because the Bible belt ones are strong does not

  mean a thing..... for goodness sake the "worldly religions" in those areas are very strict also!
• 

  JustTickledPink

  The thing is most of the older JWs didn't have the communications systems we did. My mother is an example, her and 8 of her brothers and sisters are all baptized JWs but were raised in Sask, Canada on a farm. They didn't have TV, they were poor and uneducated, hard workers, but bought into the concept. My mom didn't have a TV until the 80's. She still doesn't have cable and doesn't surf the net.

  The younger generation now has a lot more communication and information systems available to them. Not only do they have TV, Cable, movies, but the INTERNET!!! If their parents don't want them on the net at home, guess what? it's in every public school now. They have cell phones, etc. What I'm getting at is the older generation is what keeps the Org together... they will die off, and this younger generation isn't going to keep this stuff up too much longer. The carrot being dangled in front of them isn't the same, Armeggedon is no longer just 5 years off....

  3rd world countries might buy into it, but I don't think the US, UK, Canada will be the JW breeding ground it once was.
• 

  metatron

  If this change actually happens, we need to think a little deeper about its cause. Printing twice as many of the same issue

  doesn't make a lot of sense if $avings are the immediate motive. It may be that they seek to get rid of this embarassment of a magazine

  completely - but want to do so gradually, so as not to alarm the friends. So, their savings may be a longer term goal, stretched

  out Henschel style, to avoid the appearance of decline.

  metatron