If anything much was ever made about 1984, then it must have been strictly a local matter. Certainly where I was during those years of the early to mid 1980s, nobody suggested 1984 as seeing in Armegeddon - but then again that could well have been because memories of 1975 were still fresh in most people's minds!
There was indeed a surge of growth in JW numbers during the 1980s, but this had little or nothing to do with the date 1984:
- starting in 1982, a concerted effort was made to contact persons who had either formerly "studied" with the JWs, or who were publishers who had become "inactive."
As a result, for a number of years during the 1980s, the total annual increase in publishers actually exceeded the number of those baptised each year:
- something that is easily confirmed from the Annual Report, as listed in the Jehovahs Witness Yearbooks for those years. (Also something that has never happened either before or since).
Also, unlike the post-1975 crash, this situation continued for several years after 1988:
- thus strongly suggesting that 1984 had very little to do with it!