we were gonna be in paradise soon! No need for higher education, buying a house, or even braces - Jehovah will fix those crooked teeth soon!
Yep, was there for that!
Our congregation had “October Frank” reminding us every October “This is it! The GT is gonna happen in October“! BTW Frank has been dead for over 10 years.
Yeah, October was da month!
My extremely zealous 110% JW grandfather and I would get into arguments in the 90's when I would bring up the fact that the end was overdue. He would say loudly and strongly "It's umminent! It's umminent!" (He pronounced "imminent" as "umminent."). He's been dead over 20 years, and the end still ain't nowhere in sight.
Things started changing somewhere around the mid 90s
Yes, I totally agree. That's when the wind began to leave my JW sails. Before that, I had been a zealous, greatly sacrificing reg pio who would have unhesitatingly died for the religion. I think the "generation" doctrine change in early 1995 was the turning point. We got all the way to the goal line and they moved the goal post to some hazy location where we couldn't even see it anymore.
After 1995, I really started hearing myself in the ministry. In earlier times, I had been well-known as being adept in the ministry. I would describe paradise in vivid terms to those I encountered in the field. But around 1995, when I really started hearing myself, it began to sound unrealistic, cultish, fantastical. We were going to literally live forever on earth? ...a small rock upon which all living things die and recycle? ... a planet which, according to well-known science is going to be engulfed by the sun when it enters another stage of its existence and starts to expand? We were going to pet lions and never get cavities in our teeth and build beautiful houses and all get along while wearing khaki pants and eating fruit? It just started sounding unrealistic, and it was never the same after that. It was all downhill.
I recall the stir it caused in the late 80s at the SF convention when the brother‘s talk praised couples who remained childless for the sake of the good news!
I don't know whether this is what you're referring to, but there was a major dist conv talk in the late 80's titled something like "Responsible Childbearing in the Time of the End." It basically indicated that we were so close to the end that couples should give serious thought to having children. I will never forget that talk.
no children to care for them when they get older, and the years keep clipping away.
That is a major concern to me. I wouldn't expect my children to serve me and be my caretakers, but I would like to have someone who would care that I exist and make sure I'm not mistreated if I go to a nursing home. I observe my employer and his family. He has two boys and two girls, all 30ish. They all have a really good relationship. He will have somebody to visit him and make sure he's OK when he's older. He did the same with both of his parents who died in the last few years. I observed all that the whole while thinking that my wife and I will have nobody - not one single soul. I worry that I will die first and leave her completely alone in the world. I'm working desperately now to get our affairs in order so that if I go first, things will be easier on her. If she goes first and I start getting weak, I plan on just going to a desert in the American West and hiking off, preferably to some mountains and dying under the stars. I don't want to go to a nursing home with no family to check on me - to just be placed there to die.
And to think... I was told my whole life that I was going to live forever in paradise and now my hope is to just find the best way to die.
That was a flat out lie! Their home was foreclosed on and they tried to hang on to it tooth and nail!
Totally believable story. Sounds just like many of the JWs I knew. I know one who is to this day a prominent elder. He has almost a sickness about money. He didn't have that much, but he was extremely miserly almost in an unhealthy way. He worked in a parts department for a certain industry and he lost his job. He would NEVER have given it up... NEVER. He started doing cleaning work after he lost his job and he started pioneering. The story went around that he gave up his job to pioneer; it was total BS; he lost that job.
Now the reality of no savings, no retirement plan
I'm one of those who will never get tor retire because of listening to and obeying the org. During my years of serving the org fulltime, I never received any help from others; I worked grueling jobs to support myself. And all the time, others actually asked me for help. I worked on others' houses and cars for nothing. I loaned them money and gave them money. I contributed when others needed money for medical treatment, tires for their cars, etc. And now, I am stuck working with no relief in sight.
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Yeah, JWs still seek their Neverland. The old-timers are confused; it was supposed to have long been here by now, but it must be just around the corner.
I, myself, still seek Neverland, just not the JW version. I just can't make myself give up all hope. I still seek answers. I now look to math and physics for answers, and I see things in those areas that make me thing there might be something else besides the realm we experience now... that there might some kind of higher being(s) responsible for our realm.
I fully understand and can completely relate to your entire post. Those who have never been JWs and even JWs who didn't experience it in the 70's, 80's, & 90's will not be able to fully relate. I've noticed that over on the exJW reddit, there are mostly younger exJWs who were not around in the earlier years, and they just can't relate to what it was like then.
