I know it's weird, but here is what happened in my life.
I was raised a JW, and was about 20 in 1975. I knew "the end was near".... as told at all conventions, (yes, I remember them asking "How long was Eve alive before she sinned? could it have been one year? six months? and throw out all kinds of possibilities) but I also read the Bible, and the Bible said, "No man knows the day or the hour." and I trusted the Bible more than men, so when I heard of people leaving the organization in 76, I didn't know why. I really did not realize that other congregations had talks, parts on the meetings, countdowns, "stay alive till 75", etc.
I kept waiting for the "Sodom and Gomorrah effect" where men will be marrying men, women will marry women..... The sexual revolution had just begun, but it was not a common thing that everyone accepted in those days.
Also, even tho I knew no one knew the day or the hour, we went to see Star Wars in 1977?ish? and we love it! Afterwards, as we (a group of JWs)all left the great adventure we had just experienced said, "we hope the end does not come before 1981, as we want to see the next film!"
As far as 1914 goes, as to what Russell said in the 1874 ish time, I really didn't know at all that he had said one thing, and changed it to another until almost five years ago or so.
In "the old days" say the 70's - 80's, people were definitely discouraged from college, but were not DF'd or shunned, or lost privileges in my area, and I think that is another factor. In some areas, things were more relaxed, in other cities/ countries/ congregations, they weren't .
Now that I look back and hear what all others have experienced, I cannot believe I did not catch the clues. WT has everyone on such a fast spinning hamster wheel of duties (meetings, service, cleaning K Halls, conventions, reading magazines, building K Halls and assembly halls) that people just do not have the time to investigate. It is easier NOW, with the much better/ faster computers and internet than it was when you would have to go to a paper library, or pull WT bound volumes off the shelf.
When I went to work at a High School, in maybe 2011, we were reading the history of that time period, regarding the League of Nations and United Nations, and I learned that there was quite a bit of PUBLIC information regarding them All the mystery of "uuuuuuhhhh Brother Knorr figured this out" or whoever it was.... It was not true. It was public information that had been twisted to make the WT Society/ GB look as if they had "holy spirit".
*** kc chap. 17 p. 166 par. 10 The King Fights at Armageddon ***
10 What composite “beast” has appeared in these “last days,” and what has been its performance on the world stage? At an international convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1942, the public talk entitled “Peace—Can It Last?” called attention to the prophecy at Revelation 17:7, 8. The speaker, Watch Tower president N. H. Knorr, identified “the wild beast that . . . was” as the League of Nations—brought forth in 1920. But now, in that wartime year of 1942, he stated: “The League is in effect in a state of suspended animation, and needs to be revived if it is ever to live again. It has gone into the abyss of inaction and ineffectiveness. It ‘is not.’” President Knorr went on to show that “the wild beast that . . . was, but is not, . . . is about to ascend out of the abyss, and it is to go off into destruction.” True to the Bible prophecy, that “beast” was revived in 1945 as the United Nations.
So, in conclusion, nevermind, I would say that I may just have been such a naive witness, that may have not really believed what you had told me, at least from my experiences.
