construction company!
Please pardon the wild speculation. I'm just thinking about the money. After all, that is what the governing body and legal department seem mostly concerned about. The Watchtower Society isn't doing very well as a publishing company. They are making big cutbacks. They can try to explain this away as simplification, but if it was profitable, they would be expanding their printing operations.
However, Jehovah's Witnesses also do a lot of construction with free labor. This is quite a racket. Maybe that is where their future lies. Think of the money they are already making. They will be selling a lot of buildings in New York that were built or improved with free labor. They will make millions. Think of all the brothers that are forsaking the ministry to help with endless kingdom hall projects, many of them unnecessary. This is a huge money maker for them. They receive the building funds as donations. They loan it back and charge interest and then still get ownership when the loans are paid off. It doesn't matter that growth is slow, they just keep building anyways. They make much more money
from someone swinging a hammer than they do from someone knocking on doors.
Think of the disaster relief work they do. The labor is free. They probably get some donated building materials. Then they collect the insurance check. I have even heard they get additional funding from "worldly" organisations for their efforts. We are looking at huge profits. They even get a chance to appear to be charity.
They are making huge changes and it appears that more changes are on the way. Could they be trying to improve their business model?
Please pardon the even wilder speculation. Why are they hinting that they fulfilled Matthew 24:14 while embracing a generation teaching that can indefinitely postpone Armageddon? What are they up to? Is it possible that they could try to distance themselves form the preaching work? They could say something like the preaching work was so successful that God decided to postpone destruction. They could decide to declare that Satan has been proved wrong. He has been invisibly abyssed and we have begun a new era of human history.
They could talk about Jonah's disappointment when Nineveh wasn't destroyed or Abraham's pleading with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if even a few righteous men could be found in it. They could really make the Witnesses feel guilty for looking forward to the destruction of 99.9% of humanity! They could maintain much of their strictness while appearing more mainstream. They could use their free labor resources for much more profitable projects. They could employ more effective methods of recruitment and still allow older or weaker members to engage in some kind of revised teaching work, perhaps something that is more focused on benefiting people, rather than shoving doctrines down their throats. If they had enough ambition, they could change their name again and become the major new religion of the 21st century.
OK, I know there are problems with this scenario. Feel free to criticise it if you want to. I don't even know if the governing body has the imagination or courage to make major changes like that. However, I'm sure that they are desperate and are well aware of the challenges they are facing, especially their current financial situation. They also know they have a huge source of free labor. I think they would have to be crazy to not think of ways to use this in a more profitable way.