I knew three.
Well, one I didn't really know. Can't recall for sure if male or female. This person was quite elderly, and never saw him/her attend any meetings all year long, except the one time at the Memorial Celebration I watched at a distance, and I saw everyone doting on the person in the wheelchair. This was in the congregation at Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada.
The other two I knew personally. I was about 19 years of age, and I went pioneering at the time, staying at Lee's place in Brooks, Alberta. We were pretty good friends, but frankly, he did not seem to me to be all that intelligent, and given we were about the same age, he did not seem very mature in his behavior either. He partook of the emblems that year, and those who knew him best questioned his judgment, saying he had a lot of growing up to do. A year or two later he quit taking the emblems.
The third person I knew, Dave, was when I lived in Calgary, Alberta. He was about a year younger than me, and extremely intelligent, winning the Governor General's Award for the highest marks in scholarship exams for the whole province. He was also very likable, and was popular with everyone and played the piano for the congregation. Very talented. Then he went pioneering down around Brooks for a month, and stayed for a while at the farmhouse of my future father-and-mother-in-law. He had never been to a farm before, having been raised in the big city (Calgary), and the only concept he had was buying fruits and vegetables and meat from the grocery store or supermarket. They showed him all the different crops, as well as all the different vegetables growing in the garden, which was a total surprise and delight to him. I could not believe anyone that bright could be so utterly naive and ill-informed all those years since the day he was born. He was raised by his father, but I never saw him at any meetings. Anyway, Dave was a partaker of the emblems, and most accepted him as of the anointed, except I still had questions about his youth.
Which brings me to a question I'm sure most of you had over the year. During the time of Rutherford, those of the 144,000 Anointed Class were supposed to have reached that number. Once 144,000 was reached, then there should be no more new ones of the Anointed. In rare cases, there may be apostasy by one of the Remnant, and then Jehovah is supposed to fill that vacancy with another, making them one of the Anointed. This, however, is supposed to be a rare incident. I could not believe that of all the places in the world, we lived in a very small location, with relatively few JW's by comparison. Why was I seeing these youth becoming of the Anointed? It did not add up to me. How many other incidences of this were going on in other congregations all over the world? So now, every year I could not wait to see the new Yearbook come out, where I could see the number who partook of the emblems around the world. Every year the numbers kept getting smaller. The anointed were all getting older, and so it is logical the numbers would get less every year. But what would happen if the number went up from the previous year by a few? This would kind of make a lie of the proposition that the 144,000 had been filled in previous years, right? Anyway, I have not looked at these statistics for quite some time now, so am curious if this has happened at all. Anyone know fore sure?
Rod P.
