I liked the point that Minimus made about how many billions of people over the centuries wondered if they had the truth or not.
If anyone has any figures on the following question, I'd appreciate it. I once discussed this with a brother who was sympathetic to my situation. I asked him: what if we take all the people who were ever baptized, studied, or were exposed to the WT's teachings enough to say that they knew the religion to a reasonable degree. Then take away all the people who have been DF'd, quit on their own, drifted away, or even still attend but have already left in their heart. I don't mean JW's who have died, just the living. We could consider those who have died, but then the question would balance out with those dying still believing and those dying who were DF'd or had quit already.
My question to him was that it seemed that if we counted all the people who "knew" the truth well enough and subtracted those who were now out, no matter the reason, I thought that more than half of those who once ever knew the truth had rejected it as NOT the truth. In other words, if there are 20 million people alive today who are JW's, were JW's, or know the religion, and there are only six million active publishers, what does that say? To me, it tells me that most people who examined this "product" chose not to buy it, or if they once did, had it "taken away from them" by being DF'd, or just returned the product to the store (quit their study or DA'd themselves).
Does anyone have any idea what the percentages are in this situation. I think it would be an interesting point to make with the next JW's that any of us meet up with. I would ask, "How come most people who have test-driven your product, reject it?" I wonder how they would answer that. Oh, wait. "Jehovah is sifting his organization." That's hardly a fair answer. That's like me test-driving a car and after I buy it and it breaks down, the salesman says that this is how they discover which cars are bad and what things need more work. That is hardly fair to me, who now has to buy another brand of car.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts. I am curious as to how you view this.
