1975 Reaction

by MadApostate 46 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Naeblis

  In 1975 I was still only a twinkle in my Daddy's eye :)
• 

  Duncan

  Mad-A,

  I posted this here a couple of months ago, same topic really:

  I remembered this just the other day, and thought I’d make a post of it.
  Back in 1971, during my first year of pioneering, I was kind of adopted by one of the sisters in the congregation who was keen to get me friendly with her son (a teenage boy just a little younger than myself) with a view to getting him interested in the pioneer service.

  Kevin spent part of that summer shadowing me everywhere I went, “learning to be a pioneer”, and many times I was invited to meals at his house.

  His family had been in the Truth for ever. His parents, Rose and Albert, were absolute congregation stalwarts.

  I gradually began to get a bit irritated with them, since it was clear after a few weeks of looking after Kevin, and accepting some (not all, just the minimum number for politeness’ sake) of his many invitations to his house. that they had come to regard me as their property, their own “sponsored pioneer”.

  Rose and Albert began to share confidences with me. Who they didn’t particularly care for in the congregation. Some of the gossip and dirt they knew about some of the brothers. Which ones they thought were hypocrites, or the “spiritually weak” ones. I was very uncomfortable with the whole thing.

  Well, eventually, the day dawned when they thought they could entrust me with their Big Secret.

  They had quite an old house with a cellar. One evening, after another fry-up round their house, Rose said “We want to show you something.”

  Me, and Rose and Kevin (Albert was out) went down to their cellar.

  Rose showed me this HUGE storehouse of canned food. I mean HUGE. Literally thousands upon thousands of cans of food, obviously stockpiled over many years (decades?) all stacked in crates, labelled up. I remember seeing soup, baked beans and corned beef – no doubt there were many more, but I was just overwhelmed by the scale of it.

  “We do it for the Brothers” said Rose “…when Armageddon comes, there’ll be food shortages in one place after another. The Scriptures tell us. That’s why we have all this”

  At this point I was actually a bit frightened. These people were clearly mad. I actually at the time myself completely believed in the whole Armageddon thing, but had an idea that, in any difficulty, Jehovah Would Provide. All this was just crazy, but all I managed to say was some kind of weak joke about not forgetting to keep a can opener handy.

  ******************

  Well, Kevin never did become a pioneer – after the summer he got a job at an Electrical shop, selling kettles and washing machines.

  As for me, as G R A D U A L L Y as I could, I broke off the connection with Rose and Albert, since they were clearly insane.

  Anyone else ever come across this phenomenon of “stockpiling against Jehovah’s Day” ? Or were Rose and Albert unique?

  Duncan.
• 

  joelbear

  in our congo, stockpiling would have been frowned upon as lack of faith also, so don't think there was any of that.

  a brother in the cong sold his business

  i was the only teenager to attend my senior year, 1975-76, all others my age dropped out to pioneer

  my brother put off surgery on his oldest daughter

  my father put off buying a house for the family, a decision he still regrets

  i didn't see the steps leading up to the great tribulation happening so i didn't think it was coming, i was like tweety, afraid armageddon would come before i got to have sex and i too was boy crazy, hee hee

  rugs

  lejo
• 

  Tina

  Greetings,
  Although I had no personal knowledge of 'stockpiling',my mom began ignoring medical and dental concerns a few years prior to '75'. She said,'Not needed,jah will fix everything in the new system'.
  She said we'd never finish high school(heard that about grade school as well). So we were told to ignore scholarships and awards.Needed home repairs were ignored.

  She had this insane idea that we would literally 'flee to the mountains'. It was a crazy and sad time for we kids.Everytime there was a severe thunderstorm,I became terrorized and immobilzed with panic attacks,thinking this was the start of the 'great tribulation'.
  The whole family waited in anxious anticipation.

  Well '75' came and went. The only result was that most of my aunts and uncles left the org. Just some memories,Tina
• 

  Englishman

  Hows this for stock piling!

  A few years ago, Her Ladyship and I stayed with some ex-JW friends who live in the New Forest. One morning our host asked what I would like to have for breakfast, so I suggested "Maybe some Shredded Wheat or Weetabix, whatever".

  Sure enough along came two Weetabix and a jug of cold milk, so I took a mouthful from my spoon and.... GRUGH! Cardboard? Worse!

  I looked at the Weetabix box and turned it around to see this add:

  "Collect 3 Weetabix tokens, enclose a postal order for 1 shilling and 6 pence and send away now for your England World Cup Winners badge!"

  England won the World Cup in 1966.

  Englishman.

  ..... fanaticism masquerading beneath a cloak of reasoned logic.
• 

  princecharmant

  1975. I turned a teenager the year the world was to have ended. A year to that year, there was NOT ONE MEETING that did not mention the coming great tribulation. It was the one subject all Witnesses in all congregations spoke about. It was the reason kids were pulled out of school, the reason most brothers and sisters had that collective look of madness in their eyes since they "knew" it was all going to be over in a couple of months or weeks, then we would help the carrion birds clean up the mess. 1975 was why most of us went out in the heavy rain of the tropics, slushed through muddy paths, suffered sun-stroke, waded rivers to get to announce the "good news" before it was too late. It was why we lived, because we were going to live forever thereafter. We could suspend comfort, education, every thing else because we would get it all real soon. And even if we died announcing the news of the end of "the system of things", we would wake up into a brand new world.

  And now they say it was never said. The references to that year are there in black and white in the publications - including the Kingdom Ministry. Six Thousand Years of Man's Rule - came to an end in 1975, thus saith the Watch Tower. The major publications contained time charts pointing to 1975.

  In believing and propagating the falsehood that was 1975, the Witness-world suffered collective dementia. But some of us who lived through those times cannot admit the collective amnesia. Young as I was, my zeal for this religion (of my fathers, yeah) has been on the wane since that year - and all the lies, deceit and denial that followed have precipitated things much faster. For anyone to now claim we read too much meaning into that year is too great an insult. Each inch of the way we were told and retold that the end would come in 75. There was no room for any other argument and whoever the people were who led us all on (especially those who cooked up and served the lie), they stand accountable to God Jehovah for destroying so many lives and now turning back to deny they ever did so.

  Now to the question: did we stock up in our part of the world? No. I am from the third world; daily living was/is hard enough and money in short supply. The idea of getting supplies was never mooted here - and could not have been followed anyway. On hindsight, 1975 was of much stronger appeal here partly because most of the Friends were only managing to survive. We all gave in to the idea of having those dainty homes the publications showed would soon be ours, and then all those great animals we'd play with, and them gorgeous apples (had never eaten one before, only had my first apple in '84). And of course, we all wanted to travel the world, talk to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Solomon and Abel and Methuselah and Mary the mother of Jesus and allsuchdeadbutback ones.

  Too bad I'm getting close to forty, all the way from thirteen.

  pc
• 

  Undecided

  Hi,

  I remember what went on until 1973, I left the org during this time as I was tired of having all my time and energy tied up by my duties in the congregation. I moved away so I could dump my position as PO and have a life again. I moved back about a year later and didn't continue my association with the cong. I didn't beleive the end was coming in 1975 anyway.

  Ken P.
• 

  MrMoe

  MadApostate - Used this on my dad.

  At first my dad saif the society never said it. Then I pulled his bound voume of the 1968 Awake! and went to the article "What do the 1970's mean to you?" (or something like that.) Then he admited it, but said it was just a writer's opinion. Then I reminded him the Governing Body wrote the articles. Then and only then did my father admit they said 1975.

  I think all the elders know, my dad sure did, but he was taking part in "Theocratic Warfair," the term used when it's OK to lie to protect the Wt unless you are caught with your pants at your ankles.

  If you can get your hands on that Awake or the bound volume, you are set!
• 

  kilroy

  1975? Boy do I remember 1975! Stockpiling? Oh, yeah. We always did a lot of canning during the harvest season, so we had a closetful. One couple would go to the canning companies in the area and buy those huge gallon cans of everything and put them in the basement. A CO remarked from the platform that he knew who he was going to stay with when IT hit.

  Get rid of your profit sharing plans and retirement savings. You can use that money now to serve Jehovah. We all had station wagons. Anyone remember station wagons? The forrunner of SUVs. Thirteen kids in our book study under the age of 10. Yuck! When "Jehovah" said jump, we said how high?

  Do you know what it is like to live on measly Social Security? At least we have that and our house is paid for.

  Just try to find 1975 in your indexes. It has all been purged.

  Thanks WTS! Kilroy
• 

  You Know

  The 1975 fiasco was totally predictable and inline with the premature expectations that the apostles continually suffered from. Even well into the apostolic era, there was the general expectation that Christ's return was imminent. That's why Paul finally wrote his prophecy foretelling that the end would not come until the apostasy comes FIRST. That gave them a marker to look for that would prevent them from continually falling victim to false expectations.

  While the Watchtower recognizes that the apostasy came first in the form of the clergy of Christendom, what is little appreciated is that the apostate man of lawlessness has still not been revealed by Christ. And according to Christ himself, he is still destined to remove from his own congregation the weed-like lawless ones under the influence of the Man of lawlessness. He is destined to sit in the temple of God, which of course is the anointed congregation, and while it is apparent that the clergy have done that in that the original bishops of Christendom were apostate anointed ones, nevertheless, the ultimate fulfillment of that prophecy seems to call for an apostasy more directly from within the organization along the lines of the original apostasy---repeating the 1st century pattern of the development of the congregation. So, Paul's words to the Thessalonians, warning them not to get excited whether by a letter or verbal message, to the effect that the day of Jehovah was near, finds a final realization in recent times in the 1975 excitement. There was simply no way that the judgment would begin until the appearance of the now ongoing apostasy among Jehovah's Witnesses.

  Ironically the 1975 fiasco contributed to the apostasy by stumbling and angering many who were disappointed. But, as it stands, looking back to 1975, the apostasy had not at that time become evident. But, there was no one back then that had that kind of insight into matters, and even if there were a few individuals that did have that sort of vision, they would not have been believed. But, over time, those who actually do wait on Jehovah, a concept that is anathema to the apostate, can understand the truth and why Jehovah has kept silent up until now. Now, with diminished expectations among nearly everyone in the organization, even among the most ardent believers, and the virgins nodding heavily in the final watch of the night, and the apostasy well under way among Jehovah's Witnesses, now, now, it is time for Christ's thief-like arrival in the night. It is time for Jehovah to "rise up to the booty," for him to "quietly come up so as to raid the people." Like a thief in the night indeed. / You Know