The people from that era have all but left, truly, I’ve been out for going on 14 years, and year over year, I hear less and less about the people that once were there. Even people you thought would’ve never given up, elders, Bethelites, I heard about one person I knew that just stopped going after his wife died, at age 92, he now waits to die because he went to Bethel at 17 and now sits in a 1-bedroom welfare apartment. Waste of life, lost his kids because he didn’t talk to them after they left. Of all the peoples I heard of, if they haven’t died yet, they’ve gone with the exception of 1 or 2 families. One popped up in the papers the other day, for having a meth lab in his shed.
The problem off course is that they somehow snag younger people, a different message, a different group but this generation does not remember the last, does not know or remember the promises. I don’t believe JW today are the same JW I grew up with, in a sense us apostates won, they moderated significantly, but in a sense we lost because our stories no longer match their reality.
The tales of ‘75 have gone; the generation lines redrawn; the truth rewritten and with regret; the past becomes a silhouette.