Understand this is huge.
good credit+equity+revenue= loans
If they have good credit and almost a billion in equity, anyone would want to loan them money. Think about the 1970s the Governing Body believed 1975 was the end. So they are sitting on some buildings which were purchased years ago for lets say 1 million dollars. They have the properties appraised and find there is 40 million in equity they could justify taking the loans to expand. After all, the end is here. They continue with the practice of borrowing against the equity every year to cover growth until something tragic like 2008 happens. They lose their cash flow and are faced with paying a huge note with compounding interest. There is a threshold were the loans become so big new loans are created to cover the old loans. With fees and interest this would become a down hill spiral very fast. In fact the debt becomes so huge with interest and fees one is left with two choices. Bankruptcy or sell off the assets and pay off the debts.
An experienced accountant could look at their holdings and predict with some accuracy when a collapse would happen. Imagine the narcissistic, arrogant, assholes looking at a spread sheet handed to them by one of their accounting firms and they say, "look brothers the end must be here there is no way Jehovah would let us fail" and according to the numbers we only have 15 years left. I could see this motivating them to not be fiscally responsible. They are true believers in their cause. It would only push them more to pontificate their false narrative. Their failing financial problems would only embolden them to do more and not react the way a fiscally responsible organization would.