slimboyfat: "After all the cutbacks, closures, aging membership, scandals, payouts, bans, media exposure, JWs are still growing 1.4%? I don’t know whether to be surprised or skeptical, to be honest. I really expected growth to be zero or negative."
Slim, As time passes by, I question often made claims more and more, from whatever the source. I have gotten to the point that I am getting closer to feeling just as skeptical from religious claims made, as I am from political statements made by their leaders. They both seem to use similar tricks in fooling people to believe their outlandish claims.
The Insight publication stated: "While malicious lying is definitely condemned in the Bible, this does not mean that a person is under obligation to divulge truthful information to people who are not entitled to it."
Also: "...persons who are momentarily overreached in telling a lie do not automatically become guilty of an unforgivable sin."
And this: "Especially serious have been the religious lies, as they have endangered the future life of persons deceived by them."
Thus, we are told by this religious group who claim to hold "the truth," that religious lies are "specially serious" and ‘dangerous.’ At the same time, we are told that lying is justified in some cases (when it suits them really), and that ‘overreaching in telling a lie do not automatically become guilty of an unforgivable sin.’
The question is: Since the WT Society is going through all the negative things you mentioned, could it be that they are (or, would be) willing to lie to us (statistics among other things) in order to keep followers thinking that they are as strong as ever? Did not a lawyer of theirs (Covington) once said in a court room that WT leaders stood by this motto, "unity at all costs"?
Is this what we are seeing?