Didn't the WTS forgive loans that congregations acquired for renovation purposes ?
Taken from JEHOVAH'S WITNESS HORROR STORIES:
Stephen Lett: “Your loans are cancelled! Now, keep paying us.”
Jehovah’s Witnesses have always said that they are different from other religions by virtue of the fact that they don’t pass a collection plate and they don’t hound their members for money.
Oh really?
On tv.jw.org, take a look at the May 2014 JW Broadcasting program, featuring governing body member Stephen Lett.
He tells the sheep, straight out: “We need to increase our finances.”
Then, somewhere around 21:00 minutes, he gets into some classic watchower DoubleSpeak. Follow along on the video if you can tolerate listening to him talk. Here are the relevant snippets of what he says:
“We also have heard from Circuit Overseers and others that some of the brothers and sisters may have a misconception about some of the recent policy changes that have been instituted. For example, all congregations that had a Kingdom Hall or Assembly Hall loan to pay off were informed that their mortgages were cancelled. Now if you think about that it’s amazing, isn’t it? All their loans were cancelled. Can you imagine a bank telling homeowners that all their loans were cancelled and that they should merely send into the bank each month whatever they can afford? Only in Jehovah’s organization could such a thing happen!”
He uses the word “cancel” three times. The congregations loans were CANCELLED. Let’s go to the dictionary.
Cancelverb
5.(Accounting) to close (an account) by crediting or paying all outstanding charges: He plans to cancel his account at the department store.
6. to eliminate or offset (a debit, credit, etc.) with an entry for an equal amount on the opposite side of a ledger, as when a payment is received on a debt.
Ok, so we have our definition of the word “cancel.” According to the dictionary, when Stevie Lett said “all loans were cancelled,” he must have meant “all loans were closed, all debts were paid, all balances were zeroed.
But… but… in his very next sentence, he says:
Can you imagine a bank telling homeowners that all their loans were cancelled and that they should merely send into the bank each month whatever they can afford? Only in Jehovah’s organization could such a thing happen!
And later he says:
… some of us took this to mean that the Organization had a surplus of funds and thus took this action, as if the loans did not need to be reimbursed. Could this misconception have affected the amount that some have chosen to donate each month?
So… the loans were cancelled (wiped off the books, paid off.) Once they were cancelled, they are non-existent. When I pay off a car loan, the debt is cancelled. It no longer exists. It is gone. I don’t have to keep sending the bank "whatever I can afford."
But after saying they were cancelled, Stevie says that they still exist… and they need to be reimbursed.
So they weren’t cancelled at all. What happened was: the wt changed the terms of the loans. They no longer tell the congregations what their balance is, and the congregation no longer has a way to pay the loan off. They will just pay and pay and pay.
Is this sounding mafia-esque to anyone other than me?