i found this article sitting in the files of jwn.
i have to say it's a masterpiece of writing and very informative.. http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/86393/1/can-the-truth-survive-the-internet#.u59svtoaysn.
it's the 7th post down on this thread and written by stephen cox.
The Witnesses are stuck in the door-to-door-salesman routines of a pre-electronic world, with no electronic outreach except watchtower.org, which no one will ever find unless he goes to look for it.
I think JW's have solved this problem since september 2012 with JW.ORG and their publicity campaigns, ipads, showing short movies to householders and so on.
According to Alexa.com JW.ORG is ranked no2 out of more than 80,000 religious/spiritual/atheist websites
i heard something about the memorial to cease soon.
not anything to do with jesus returning but rather that the number of folks partaking is increasing and the gb can't explain it since it should be decreasing or staying the same.. has anyone heard of this?
.
@Aroq is right . This possibility was talked about during the memorial talk. Something like this was said,.. 'Once all 144,000 are gathered the memorial will stop because the need to hold it will be gone by then'
it's great to see the jw.org tract in june, 2 months before the rank and file jw gets their eye on it.
jwn is always actual.
sitting here in the summer sun, drinking my coffee in the early morning, i got a memory about the co, who visited our former congregation in 2007.. it was the moment we decided to begin our fade and exit strategy.
@Gorby the rank and file will see it too since it will be discussed and handed out this month as part of the KM
i have been reading this forum for umpteen years and have heard of so many ways that the watchtower is making money.. .
would you mind contributing to help me compile a list?.
to start:.
The World Wide Work fund
The new Building Fund
Selling real estate ( cashed already about 1 billion alone in New York the last decade)
Furthermore they inherit fortunes and homes of deceased members
yesterday i was having a beer with a friend of mine who happens to be an accountant, and we began discussing this ridiculous arrangement that the watchtower has put in place.
after giving him the backstory of how the watchtower has been lending money to the local congregations and charging interest, he simply could not believe they had been doing that.. he then offered an explanation which really made sense to me.
he said that in reality what the watchtower society has been doing is actually not legal in light of their tax-exempt status.
@fastjehu why would they? To please curious apostates? Clearly the cloud of active JW's is not demanding such transparency.
yesterday i was having a beer with a friend of mine who happens to be an accountant, and we began discussing this ridiculous arrangement that the watchtower has put in place.
after giving him the backstory of how the watchtower has been lending money to the local congregations and charging interest, he simply could not believe they had been doing that.. he then offered an explanation which really made sense to me.
he said that in reality what the watchtower society has been doing is actually not legal in light of their tax-exempt status.
@Magnum better for the WTBTS they got a enormous pile of instant cash and are assured of a steady monthly income of extra millions.
yesterday i was having a beer with a friend of mine who happens to be an accountant, and we began discussing this ridiculous arrangement that the watchtower has put in place.
after giving him the backstory of how the watchtower has been lending money to the local congregations and charging interest, he simply could not believe they had been doing that.. he then offered an explanation which really made sense to me.
he said that in reality what the watchtower society has been doing is actually not legal in light of their tax-exempt status.
the WTBTS did not charge interest on the loans in none of their 239 countries and territories. Furthermore this arrangement is implemented in 239 countries and not in the US only so it has nothing to do with the IRS or US tax exempt status. If that was the case they would only change arrangements in the US.
anyway this is one of the best arrangements the WTBTS did come up with.
Before this new arrangement my congregation was donating about 125 dollars every month for Kingdom Hall fund but from now on this will be U$1145 dollars. And the other congregation in our Kingdom Hall will donate even more every single month U$1370
well i think it is safe to say that when push comes to shove and they need money the governing body will start selling these buildings.
now maybe this new pledgeing money on a regular monthly basis and robbing the congregation's of their bank accounts that are higher than three month running cost might forestall the sale of kingdom halls in the immediate future probably or most likely.. but when the going get tuff they will be selling them right out from under the publishers who paid for them.
this will be tramatic to many when this occures, any way word will spread no matter how much they try to stop it.
@frankiespeakin these lawsuits you mention mean nothing and wont do anything. I have no problem with you thinking that the WTBTS is running out of money i just want to warn you for a big dissapointment.
well i think it is safe to say that when push comes to shove and they need money the governing body will start selling these buildings.
now maybe this new pledgeing money on a regular monthly basis and robbing the congregation's of their bank accounts that are higher than three month running cost might forestall the sale of kingdom halls in the immediate future probably or most likely.. but when the going get tuff they will be selling them right out from under the publishers who paid for them.
this will be tramatic to many when this occures, any way word will spread no matter how much they try to stop it.
@frankiespeakin there were and are no losses. Look for example at the amount they spend on in
caring for special pioneers, missionaries, and traveling overseers in their field service
assignments each year. In 2013 alone it was 200 Million dollars and every year this amount is increasing.
Each year the number of publishers is growing, the number of congregations is growing, the number of biblestudents is growing , the number of languages in which they print stuff is growing. Thats a lot of growing. This new arrangement to fund the building of Kingdom and Assembly halls around the world is a guarentee for future growth. They never made more money in their entire existence then they do now and will do from now on.
i am from the era of the babylon book, and all the wt predictions that the churches of christendom would "dry up".
the book babylone the great has fallen god's kingdom rules, said people would leave the churches of christendom, in droves and the ministers would have no more people in their churches while "god's organization" would see a tremendous increase, a huge overflowing great crowd, all streaming into the watchtower and coming to the "faithful and discreet slave" for instructions.
thirty years ago there were six million jw's , today after the "great increase", and " great crowd" is now ?
in Western Europe its drying up rapidly. In my own country there are for example 1593 catholic churches which are still active and open. The archbishop declared that within the next 10 years more than 1000 of them will be closed and demolished or sold. The catholic church overhere officially has 4 milliion members overhere but only 200,000 of them are churchgoers and most of them are aged above 65 yrs old. Every year about 20,000 less people go to the catholic church. That means that within 10 years virtually none of them are left. In the 70's more than 2 million catholics went to church every weekend overhere!
The picture is the same for the protestant churches overhere. So yes its drying up at record speed in Western Europe.
