I'm an ex JW from Romania and living in an area where our CO was a young italian guy by the name of R.B. So one day he visited our congregation. It was just after the new light on "this generation", somewhere in may 2010 if I recall correctly. I wanted badly to ask him "The number of the remnant should logically decrease as we get closer to Armageddon. Then why the Annual reports indicate an increase of those partaking the emblems?". It was just pure curiosity, no malice involved.
So, when the morning meeting was over, I asked to have a private word with him. Before asking the aforementioned question, I took out of my wallet 30 RON (about 8 Euro...not much but enough for 8 litres of gas at that time) and asked him to receive them as a gift. His reaction was: "Oh, no, keep them. You may need them more than I do". So I insisted. And he rejected me again. I insisted a third time, with more obstinacy. This time e took the money timidly and thanked me. Then we discussed the issues of the increase in the number of partakers and the "new light" on "this generation" and he served me the official WT doctrine on those matters:
1. The number of partakers incresed possibly because of 2 causes. First, Jehovah probably decided that the world-fellowship would need a substantial number of annointed in order to insure a safe passage of the "sheep" through Armageddon (like they were some sort of spiritual guardians watching for the welfare of the flock and serving them the spiritual food until reaching the New System). And maybe the number 144.000 was not quite as filled as we thought and maybe the sealing of the 144.000 was not quite over yet. The second possible reason could be the increase in prozelites coming from mainstream christianity which were used with partaking in their ex-churches and thought they were entitled to do so in the JW congregation also. But these persons were not that numerous.
2. The new light on the generation issue was linked with the previous explanation. Jehovah is wise and ingenious and can make "adjustments" in his arrangements and in the understanding of the Bible if it's for the benefit of the flock. Armageddon will be a tremendously hard gate and we need strong spiritual sheperds to guide us, not old people (this was my conclusion from what he said).
So the decision to expand "this generation" like a piece of chewing gum was put on Jehovah's back. He gave the new light. In the evening of the same day the CO gave the public speech and the issue of "this generation" was further explained. We (the world wide r&f) were those guilty of beeing too impatient and taking rash conclusions from the Bible and from the literature. Yea, like the GB never gave a totally different explanation before! I read it when I was very young in a book with red hard cover "You can live forever in Paradise on Earth". That is the translation of it's title from Romanian.
Anyway, my question is: Has anyone been refused by the overseer when presented a monetary gift? And on what reasons? Is this a unique experience or not? I still have a sort of simpathy for that overseer, but I don't understand what were his motivations...