so i’m just reading the part in ray franz book “crisis of conscience” about the 1925 prediction of “millions now living will never die”.. ofcourse all witnesses are very familiar with this campaign.
yet none of us ever had an issue with it, including myself.
since the booklet was published in 1920, we are one year away from 100 years from that time.
The big A has always been, and will always be, immediately behind the next overlapping corner.
Every child who has grown up a JW has been told he or she will likely never graduate high school given the nearness of Armageddon.
Seventy years ago the JWs were publishing books telling children not to bother even thinking of marriage because it would just complicate things during the Great Tribulation.
ronald l. lawson ph.d., professor emeritus, queens college, cuny – papers on seventh-day adventism, with some comparisons with mormons and witnesses.
9 january 2019. link.
a question that continues to draw research in the sociology of religion is what factors spur the growth of religions (kelley 1972; iannaccone 1994; bruce 2002; hoge and roozen 1979; stark and finke 2000).
This video does a great job of explaining Adventism and its offshoots:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x16tchx6Lpo
The same guy presented a varitation of this with more of a focus on JWs:
ronald l. lawson ph.d., professor emeritus, queens college, cuny – papers on seventh-day adventism, with some comparisons with mormons and witnesses.
9 january 2019. link.
a question that continues to draw research in the sociology of religion is what factors spur the growth of religions (kelley 1972; iannaccone 1994; bruce 2002; hoge and roozen 1979; stark and finke 2000).
I tried to convert a former school teacher when I was around 19 years old. I gave him various books to read, and his comments to me were that the teachings really reminded him of Seventh Day Adventist teachings. He had experience with this because some years prior, a SDA couple tried converting him. He just kept going back to how similar the teachings were.
A year or two after that, I started a Bible study with a SDA. He thought it was going to be more of an exchange of ideas, so it didn't really last very long. He told me the same thing, that there were a lot of similarities in the doctrine.
It wasn't until I was out and learned of William Miller, the Second Advent movement, and the spin off groups that were so influential in the development of Charles Taze Russell's teachings, that it all began to come together.
This chart promulgated by William Miller was kind of what put everything in perspective. CTR later copied this same basic framework to arrive at 1914. For William Miller, the date was 1843 (later 1844), but CTR just changed a few things to arrive at his preferred pet date.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Miller_(preacher)#/media/File:Millerite_1843_chart_2.jpg
i can't say much out of fear of getting caught, but i overheard a jw i know on the phone with a friend talking about "how close we are to the end.
" yeah, yeah, i know.
we've been on the brink of armageddon for well over a century, but what struck me about this particular instance was what she said next.
I discovered this forum by accident. I was already inactive and 99% out mentally.
In 2006, out of the blue I got a mass JW chain email. It said that a Bethel speaker had announced at an assembly that Matthew 24:14 had been fulfilled. The end was really, really near this time.
Since I had lost contact with JWs, I had no one whom I could reach out to in order to verify this statement. A tiny piece of me was afraid that I had made a mistake and would realize that the JWs were right far too late.
So, I googled "has Matthew 24:14 been fulfilled" and it led me to a thread on this board. Apparently, the chain email had been widely circulated and there were several threads discussing it.
So I started reading and kept reading. I would stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning every day reading and reading. Within a week or two I was 100% out and have never looked back.
Moral: This kind of "the end is really near this time" panics have happened frequently throughout the 130+ year history of the WT.
a post on another thread got me to thinking and writing.. should we even be trying to get our loved ones out of jehovah's witnesses?.
when a person truly believes in their belief system, or even if they don't but have held to that system for a long time, there is nothing we can say that will move them from that system.. why?
perhaps pride.
It's an interesting thought experiment. If I could snap my fingers and have my elderly parents magically wake up, would I do so?
Part of me thinks the humane thing to do would be to allow them to continue with their comforting delusion. Another part of me thinks that if I were in their shoes, I'd like to be confronted with the truth, consequences be damned. But I can't get in their heads and determine what their preference would be.
For me, it took roughly ten years before I fully came to terms with leaving the JWs and felt like I'd reached some version of being "normal." They probably don't have that much time left.
At the end of the day, though, it's just that, a thought experiment. You can chip away at it, but they have to want it themselves. There were multiple conversations that I had along the way that chipped away at the foundation of my JW faith, but I had to connect the dots myself. Nobody woke me up.
https://youtu.be/f40ukvgjsqw.
is it the first of april already?.
Being a Witness used to require some actual knowledge and personal skill in talking people. Now you just need to be able to set up a cart and a video screen then stand next to it.
I was a child in the 80s and a teenager in the 90s. When I was a kid, you were expected to know prophecy and at least attempt to understand "deep spiritual matters." There was still a palpable excitement around the Cold War and how it would result in the Great Tribulation.
In the 90s, especially after the generation change in '95, Witnesses who were well versed in JW doctrine and prophetic speculation were seen as curiosities. It was no longer a requirement, but an interesting throwback to an earlier era.
I became inactive in 2005 and by that point curiosity about doctrine and prophecy was frowned upon. Witnesses would at best think you were wasting your time and at worst think you harbored secret apostate tendencies. Public talks were shortened so that brothers wouldn't throw in their own thoughts. Instructions were given discouraging brothers from studying together and using publications other than those specifically referenced in the WT study articles.
From the looks of it, the trend away from any non-sanctioned thoughts has continued in the form of televised talks and cart witnessing. How embarrassing.
i think there will be a change in the 144000 belief.
too many witnesses think they have a heavenly hope.
maybe 1914 will be discarded too.. what is your watchtower prediction?
My husband and 5 of my male jw relatives who were account servants said how tight the members were.
I was an account servant in the mid-90s. Meeting attendance on Sundays was in the 150-180 range. We typically sent in $100-200 a month for the worldwide work. Contributions to cover the local KH expenses were in the same range or slightly lower, but the KH was paid off and we only paid our pro-rated share of utilities since we shared the KH with three other congregations.
Once a year we were required to send something like $800 for the CO's expenses, and every year the elders and MSs would have to meet together to cover the funds after months of nagging the locals to contribute.
This was a lower-middle class congregation composed mostly of immigrants in the southern United States. There wasn't much money to go around and there's only so much blood one can squeeze out of a turnip.
some churches have taken the step to allow gays, women instructing men ect.
but its not a jw thing.
its a bible thing.
The Bible is full of ancient and often contradictory principles. It's Christian denominations and their preachers that choose what elements to focus on.
So you might have fervent anti-gay denominations that'll quote anti-gay principles chapter and verse, but will look the other way when it comes to divorce, a subject on which Jesus actually spoke against forcefully.
Just about every denomination now ignores counsel against sloth and gluttony even though the Bible is pretty forcefully against such sins.
So when someone says "Hey, don't blame me, it's in the Bible" it ignores the fact that people choose which sins to focus on and which sins to ignore.
i was thinking about how the borg screws up and sexually neuters their flock by telling them when single to "deaden their body" and then boom as soon as there's a ring on the finger to not be denying eachother.. do any of you know of jws who have been screwed up by these teachings?
i know 2, 1 elder came back from honeymoon having a nervous breakdown unable to cope with the cd that sex produced in his head.
and the other called up her parents while on honeymoon, crying and begging for themto come and get her, since she was so shocked that sex hurt.
As an elder appointed at 26, I had to listen to stuff that frankly, was none of my damn business. But it was YHWH's, so, there ya go.
My mindset as a zealous JW teenager:
Was not Timothy given mature responsibilities as a teenager? Was not Samuel called to Jehovah's service as a child? Would we refuse counsel from either of them were they alive today? Who are we to question Jehovah's wisdom in this regard?
My mindset as a 40 year-old ex-JW:
I wouldn't trust most 26 year-olds with directions to the nearest gas station, much less with marriage counseling.
i was thinking about how the borg screws up and sexually neuters their flock by telling them when single to "deaden their body" and then boom as soon as there's a ring on the finger to not be denying eachother.. do any of you know of jws who have been screwed up by these teachings?
i know 2, 1 elder came back from honeymoon having a nervous breakdown unable to cope with the cd that sex produced in his head.
and the other called up her parents while on honeymoon, crying and begging for themto come and get her, since she was so shocked that sex hurt.
As one example, my exwife told me of one of her friends that grew up having rape fantasies because she had such a strong sex drive that she wanted to be able to fulfill without guilt.
I just read this. I kind of ties in to what I was talking about above.
The wt obsession with sex says that left alone for 2 minutes a couple would be at each other.
This was a problem for me in the immediate aftermath of leaving the JWs. That was the default assumption I carried around with me. Taken a step further, if a woman puts herself in a position of being alone with you, logically that means she wants to have sex with you.
I didn't understand or have any notion that there could be such things as platonic relationships, that you could go to lunch with a female co-worker without it being sexual. It also created an idea in my mind that sex is something that happens quickly when the opportunity presents itself without the need for flirting, courtship, and the whole song and dance that precedes it.
It really screwed things up for me. I misinterpreted a lot of situations until I reset my expectations according to the standards that exist in the real world.
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