Posts by neverendingjourney

28

How many here believe the WTS really has has 8.5 million followers / 8.5. million members

by Hotpepper in

i think it's closer to 5 million with all the selling of kingdom hells and branch bethel's all over the world.

it's even hard to get a hard copy of the lastest craptower or afake mag now in new york city..

neverendingjourney

Every census result I have seen gives higher figures for JW menbership than their own publisher numbers: Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, or any country that has a census which asks citizens to specify which religious denomination people belong to, sometimes by a significant margin. So in terms of self-identified affiliation, I wouldn’t be surprised if the worldwide figure would be over 10 million.

Let's unpack this a bit. I don't think the average Witness cares much about how the WT goes about deciding who counts and who doesn't count for purposes of their annual statistics. They're much more likely to pay attention to the rate of growth or decline.

The WT has been using the same metric for decades. I have very little doubt that the number of people who self-identify as Jehovah's Witnesses is larger than the number of publishers who have turned in a time slip at least once in the past six months.

In a sense, you can view this as a sign of honesty: If the WT were truly dishonest, they'd start counting everyone who attends the Memorial! But actually, an abrupt change like that would be very noticeable and would likely be more detrimental than not.

The 10 million figure you cite isn't particularly helpful if the goal is determining whether the WT is "cooking the books." If you could reliably compare the 10 million figure versus what that same figure was 1, 5, 10, and 20 years ago, you could start to plot trends on a graph. One would expect that trend to parallel official WT number of publishers. If there was a significant discrepancy, it would be strong evidence that the WT numbers aren't reliable.

In other words, the real doubt is the WT's honesty in revealing the true rate of growth or decline. The raw number of Witnesses isn't really an issue as there are many different credible ways of trying to arrive at the definition of what constitutes a Jehovah's Witness.

16

Hellooooo! 6 years since i posted

by Aussie Oz in

jw
friends

so... it has been six years since my last post.

i wonder who still remembers me?

a lot has changed and then again, a lot has not.... i'm still out of course as are my children who are doing very well.

neverendingjourney

Now that you're back, don't forget to turn in your time slip at the end of the month.

15

Governing Body prefers property over prayers, songs and use of bible (Mexico)

by krismalone in

for many years the government of mexico did not allow religious organizations to own property.

any property used by a religious organization was confiscated by the government.

this law changed in the mid 1990's.

neverendingjourney

The corrupting factor behind this is their arrogant belief that they're authorized to lie if it benefits them.

I had already been baptized for about a year when I learned of this doctrine. It came up during the Bible reading. We were assigned a few chapters from the book of Judges and the talk that week was about Rahab. The lesson the Watchtower took from it is that those who oppose Jehovah are not entitled to the truth. This is straight out of their literature.

Once I was out I learned that this idea had its origins during the Rutherford era and that back then it was called theocratic warfare. It's a corrupting influence because it gives them license to essentially lie whenever they think it's in the religion's best interests. After a while, it starts to corrode their core beliefs.

22

Jordan Peterson - Messiah or Poseur?

by cofty in

a jp video came up on my youtube feed last week - he was on a panel in front of a huge audience and some poor disturbed guy ran on stage and started crying and wailing to peterson that he needed his help.

it was agonising to watch.. what was even more disturbing was the comments section.

i do not exaggerate when i say that dozens of people were extolling peterson's wisdom as if jesus had come again.

neverendingjourney

He's a father figure to a generation of young men without older male role models in their lives.

There's a big market for that sort of thing.

39

Who make up the new memorial partakers?

by jwfacts in

when the doctrine regarding 1935 being the close of the calling was done away with in 2007, it was not unexpected to see the number rise.

over the next few years it went from around 8,500 to 10,500. this seemed to indicate that there were a couple of thousand people that may have felt they had the calling all along, but too shy to profess it.

for the 30 year period between the mid 1978 and 2007, parktakers had barely dropped.

neverendingjourney

Edit: Never mind.

22

Were / Are the Governing Body "Rock Stars"

by Number 6 in

in 1976 when i was a young lad of 6, fred franz came to glasgow and gave a talk in govan a suburb on the south side of the city (for those of you who dont know).

our congregation hired a bus to ferry us all to the hall and it was standing room only.

being only 6, i have only the vaguest of memories other than an old man shouting and bawling from the stage.

neverendingjourney

I went to an international convention in the mid 90s that was held at a big sports stadium. If memory serves, attendance was about 30,000.

When a GB member would walk to the stage, and it was quite a hike because the stage was in the middle of the field, the entire stadium lit up with camera flashes. You could have easily mistaken the mood for that of a rock concert.

In hindsight, it was pretty sad. They trotted out Carey Barber who was already half senile and he just droned on monotone and incoherently for 45 minutes at a time.

28

Current JW growth in the United States in historical perspective and in comparison with other groups

by slimboyfat in

current jw growth is slower than during most of their history.

the only probable exceptions are following 1975 when there was a brief worldwide decrease, the late 1920s when around half of the members left the movement, perhaps around the 1917 schism, and various schisms during russell’s time.

there were also periods of sluggish growth during the 1950/60s and around 2000. .

neverendingjourney

I'm not a conspiracy theorist by nature. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. 9/11 wasn't an inside job. The Earth is round.

That being said, I have a very difficult time accepting the JW numbers at face value. The reason for this is that Watchtower leadership believes they're entitled to lie to protect the Watchtower's interests. We saw this with the ARC. I read a news article about shunning not long ago where a WT representative outright lied in a way I don't ever recall them lying. Not clever word play. Not half truths intended to convey an incorrect impression. Lies.

It stems from their interpretation of the Rahab account. Apparently Rahab was authorized to lie because the Philistines didn't "deserve the truth." If leadership believes the flock might stumble if they publish negative growth numbers, I don't think they'd hesitate to pad them.

38

No Need To Preach In Every Country Anymore

by pale.emperor in

speaking to a pimo from my hometown yesterday.

he told me that in the watchtower study (10 nov 2019) regarding “the great tribulation” the elder on the platform said that there’s no need for jws to preach in every country in order to fulfil the prophecy, and therefore the org has already fulfilled that prophecy.

and that there’s nothing else left to wait for now but for “the great tribulation” to come.. gasps of delight came from the audience.. has anyone else heard this?

neverendingjourney

Hasn't the org been saying that for years?

I've been out over ten years, but I seem to remember a distinction being drawn between "land" and "nation." Something along the lines of "land" meaning a general geographic location as opposed to "nation," which is defined by modern boundaries and not by the borders that existed when Jesus roamed the Earth. Therefore, a witness isn't required in every nation as they currently exist on a map today.

I also seem to remember an assembly talk that proclaimed that Matthew 24:14 had already been fulfilled and the Witnesses were just waiting for Armageddon to come any day now. I remember receiving a JW chain email about it a year or so after I stopped attending meetings. That email is what prompted me to do some research online to verify whether there was any truth to the email. I discovered this forum as a direct result and I've never looked back.

39

The real dividing line isn’t between apostates and apologists it’s between...

by slimboyfat in

excellent observation from zizek about communist regimes: they didn’t care if people accepted the ideology or took it seriously, so long as people acted as if the ideology was true, that was the important thing.

in fact the regimes were deeply suspicious people who took the ideology too seriously.

people who took the ideology seriously were dangerous because they were prone to noticing the inconsistencies and flaws in the system.

neverendingjourney

Even though I was born in, my parents were inactive, so when I bought into the religion during my teenage years, it was almost as if I were a recent convert.

There was a young elder who took me under his wing. He, too, took the doctrine very seriously and we'd spend hour after hour discussing Watchtower teachings. That elder was disfellowshipped a month after I got baptized, though.

From that point forward, there weren't too many people, even elders, who wanted to engage with me. The vast majority of Witnesses would get very uncomfortable when I brought up doctrinal matters. Some even got angry. It was through social pressure that I eventually relaxed and learned that I was kind of on an island. I backed off for the most part.

Eventually I did find a few like-minded JWs, but that kind of "deep spiritual" discussion was largely unwelcome.

I think a lot of it coincided with Fred Franz's advanced age and eventual death. It seems that during the Franz era, JWs were encouraged to at least pretend to be Bible scholars, but that faded away once he was too old to hold any influence. Things started to dumb down considerably staring around 1990.

50

Did you EVER falsify your report card ?

by Chook in

every single watchtower soldier lied to god out of fear of the brooklyn popes..

neverendingjourney

I used to pioneer with some one who got really behind on his "time". Well close to the end of the service year, this person started putting 175 hours per month. No one believed these were true hours, but how could anybody prove it?

When I was a 17-year-old regular pioneer there was a 19-year-old pioneer in my congregation who I knew was faking his hours. I'd rarely see him in service. He'd often oversleep when we were supposed to go out together, and I'd have to go get him out of bed.

He was always careful to ask how many hours I had put in so far in the service year so that he would always be only 10 or 20 hours behind my pace. Then in August he all of a sudden wanted to go on vacation and lo and behold he somehow had managed to finish his 1,000 hours one month early. This was going to be a well-earned vacation without worrying about having to complete his time. Meanwhile, I had to put in a 12-hour service day on August 31st to finish out the service year.

Within a year he was publicly reproved for sleeping with a married sister.