I will remind everyone participating in this thread of one of the great events of the twentieth century: the collapse of communist rule in Europe. Thirty years ago, both the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union stood secure. Despite unrest within, and daunting challenges without, nobody in his right mind would have conceived or predicted that the Wall would crumble overnight, and that an abortive coup in the Soviet Union would lead to its implosion a mere two years later. Yet both happened and those events dramatically reshaped our world.
To my mind, the WTS is facing a similar situation. There is unrest within the ranks as more Witnesses--some quietly and others more overtly--challenge the Governing Body and its increasingly out of touch teachings and policies. Meanwhile, the glaring heat and light of negative publicity is what is getting hotter and brighter on the organization. While many if not most Witnesses remain ignorant of the Candace Conti case and other similar ones throughout the world, the Internet has become the weapon of choice for WTS foes and opposers. Cyberspace is bringing unwanted and greater pressure on the organization. Its leaders first condemned the new medium, and now that they have concluded overlate that its members have embraced it, they are making hamhanded efforts to make the WTS brand known, recognized, and relevant there. But even as the WTS struggles with finding a place and voice on the Internet, its opponents are using it to revive and recall its contradictory and inconsistent publications and teachings; point out its doctrinal flip-flops and errors; and recount its unsavory and shameful history.
For the first time since J.F. Rutherford and six other directors were railroaded off to prison in 1918, the WTS faces a crisis of monumental proportions. Ninety years ago, the organization had a leader who was very intelligent, charismatic, dynamic and ruthless. There is no one of that stature in charge now thanks to the Governing Body collective leadership which replaced the autocratic presidency of the past. Whatever adjustments the Governing Body makes to accommodate rapidly occurring changes, they seem to always be a day late and a dollar short. It was likewise in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union as the 1980s ran out and the 1990s began, and before their leaders could marshal their complete strength, events overtook them and swept them into the dustbin of history.
I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing doesn't eventually happen to the WTS and lead to its longed for implosion and end. Like so many other tyrannical systems of the past, such an organization cannot resist the human desire for freedom and liberty. Like those others, the WTS has relied on a reign of terror through the practice of disfellowshipping and exile to some kind of religious gulag to stifle and silence dissent. But just as those other despots discovered, the tighter the leadership grips, the more the power it seeks to keep will slip through its fingers. Its downfall is inevitable and I only hope that I live to see it.
Quendi
