"This Generation" change -- fallout evidence?

by reagan_oconnor 53 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Jourles

  If I recall correctly, '96-'97 was when the internet really started to take off. Easily accessible boards such as H20 started to pop up. Personal computers started to be sold at a faster pace with Win95. The advent of Windows 98 sold even more computers. You were considered behind the times if you weren't on the web by then. Yahoo's seach engine was the boss. Now look at where Google is at today. Information is now more readily available in mere microseconds than what used to be a trip to the library.

  The internet, along with major shifts in top doctrines, are helping drive the numbers down today.
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  Jourles

  Due to our present technology, the WTS can no longer control its past. If they try and rewrite it, many people stand up and notice. This was an extremely difficult task to do a couple of decades ago.
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  GetBusyLiving

  I was absolutely certain with the "new light" on the generation teaching that I was surrounded by lemmings. It didn't bother anyone, at least not visibly. A lot of people were commenting on how grateful they were for the new light and how it was soo obvious that the light was getting brighter and brighter! I really started to look at my friends differently from that point on, and I started the fade - in retrospect I should have DA'ed at that point instead of dragging it out.

  I picked out parts on the schedule at assemblies and told my friends that "I bet this is the talk where we get more new light!" They would always sort of groan and change the topic. I did that for ten years.

  GBL
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  blondie

  Hey Blondie, how is it that the baptisms drop yet they have an increase in publishers? That is strange

  People can be publishers without being baptized; children, Bible students, people who just keep putting off getting baptized.
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  TheListener

  At the time the generation change didn't bother me. I realize now that I was just along for the ride. Doing what I always did out of routine not love and faith.

  I still can't quite pinpoint what it is that shook me loose from mother's teat.

  When I figure it out I'll be sure to repeat it with others.
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  TweetieBird

  This was definitely the beginning of the end for me even though I still go to meetings, trying to fade but difficult with so many family in. Anyway, years prior to 1995, my "apostate" dad had told me that if they ever did away with the 1914 generation thing, it would be the end. A domino effect since so much hinged on 1914. At the time I was still a loyal dub and dismissed what he was saying but when they came out with this "new light" a lightbulb went off in my head. Couple that with access to the internet and then reading CofC it was all over for me. I just wish that I could muster up the strength to tell the family that I'm done. I feel like I've wasted the past 10 years pretending, spending 5 hours a week at meetingsand assemblies that make me want to puke.
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  katiekitten

  Thanks for the stats Leoleia and Blondie. You guys really know your stuff. Very impressive.

  The society live off the back of people not really knowing about all that 'historical' 1975 stuff. Its easy to dismiss with a barely credible argument, if you never lived through it.
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  observador

  Let me tell you what happened to me: when the change in the "generation of 1914" came out, I thought that the GB was being overcautious; after all, there still were a few of these people alive in 1995. Even today there are some people who wonder whether or not the "generation" has really passed (see http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/91759/1.ashx).
  
  But as the time passed, I realized how clever WT had been. It threw the "generation of 1914" doctrine out the window BEFORE IT BECAME AN EVEN GREATER EMBARASSMENT.
  
  It would take me about six more years to finally break free.
  
  Observador.
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  observador

  2014 IN MY RADAR SCREEN
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  willyloman

  I thought the generation change would be like a ship hitting an iceberg for the Witness people but it was like they didn't even notice

  My thought, exactly! I was so stunned at the (lack of) reaction of my fellow dubs. And I was the WT conductor in those days. I prepared for this study like mad, ready to put a positive spin on it, certain that many members of the congo would be confused and shocked by this "new light." Didn't happen. The comments during the meeting were routine. One elder pointed out at the key paragraph that this was 'new information" from the Society and wasn't Jah's org wonderfully progressive, yada yada. The after-meeting conversation was the same old-same old. I walked around the hall chatting up folks and there was not ONE comment on it. I felt like I'd wandered into the twilight zone.

  I was so confused by this that I went to the afternoon meeting just to hear the WT Study, thinking the other congo would register the reaction I expected to see. Nope. Same damn thing. The Stepford Wives (and Husbands) were all programmed alike. That was the beginning of the end for me. Alas, it was nearly 8 more years before I escaped. Stockholm Syndrome, as someone suggested above. That's the only explanation.

  Several years later, it must have been 2002 or thereabouts, I was out in FS with a min svt and he was discouraged that so few people from our book study were showing up for service on Saturday mornings. He said it was a trend that kept getting worse, and wondered if there was some problem in the congo. I told him that since 1995, when the WTS published new light on the "generation" doctrine, there was clearly a lack of urgency among the "friends" and that in my view it was getting more pronounced. He had that wide-eyed look as we talked until I suddenly realized he had no idea what I was talking about! I had to explain what the Nov 1995 WT had said about the new understanding of "generation." He was just amazed at such a thing, and this was 7 freakin' years later!

  So, GaryBuss is right, many of them didn't even notice.