by metatron 57 Replies latest jw friends
Thus the very increase that you posters suggest - as limitless numbers of suckers are gathered- leads directly to their undoing.
They will feel increasing pressure to compromise - or (gasp!) even shut down the preaching work, as it drains their cash flow.
The financial pinch is very real and they are stuck with it.
metatron
I agree money is an issue, but let's not forget the mega-millions in real estate they hold. The proceeds from their past and future sales is, I suspect, not going to the general fund to help with cash flow. It is more likely being invested across the Hudson River on Wall Street, where the returns are potentially far greater than the money they are "losing" on flat or declining books sales and slumping contributions.
Please consider the eventual outcome of some of the things you guys are asserting:
"they'll always be around and will never collapse"
Who says they have to disappear completely? If their changes as to meetings and the like continue, they will end up as
just another burned out Protestant sect - and a penny pinching broke one at that.
"they will reinvent themselves"
As what exactly, "truth-lite", maybe? See above.
In the contest between fanatical religious devotion and the need for cash flow, which one seems to be winning?
metatron
Right now, they are facing troubling times on the investment side as well. Both the bond market and the stock market are slumping. So, even if they have monies in relatively safe bonds, they getting hammered (although I think that will bounce back within the next 6 months or so as we hit the bottom of the recession). The real estate market has also tanked, however, they've played that brilliantly since many of their properties in Brooklyn were purchased years ago and cheap plus they were rehabed with free labor. They've still got millions they can pull from these properties.
I tend to agree they will not go completely away but will need to change the business model to survive. Interesting times.
Another question you guys need to think about: Why is the Society always so reactionary when it comes to legal challenges?
What are they afraid of?
Answer: They are a world-wide organization that has always pinched pennies because they are stretched paper-thin across the globe.
Their preaching pretensions have made them highly vunerable, much more so than well-funded religions like Catholics. They can't 'take
the punches' legally and financially - and they know it. Lawsuits? A couple good Catholic lawsuits ( 100's of millions) could cripple and
embarrass them - maybe even fatally.
metatron
WTWizard says:
Something tells me that they are soon going to make a vicious effort to reclaim their property (that is, those people that have left) in the near future. Coupled with this plugging all the information leaks that the witlesses are exposed to, it's going to be one miserable trip for anyone that's in.
Some theories I have seen include a hounding campaign, probably starting in early 2009. Hounders will be assigned those inactives that are in their former book study group to hound and round up while everyone else is in field circus. They are going to play on fears of the economy and worsening world conditions to get people back in. What they won't say is that conditions in the Washtowel Slaveholdery are deteriorating even faster, and are going to be even worse.
Wizard, I wonder how many people have the same sense of knowing this?
One of the Society's planned campaigns sometime after this "catalyst event" will be to put out a "last call" to the "lost sheep"...that's you....the faders and (maybe) some apostates. Expect a short campaign of hearing from former friends and estranged JW family members. There will be strict rules about the interaction. They will implore you to repent and return. Because of the economic chaos and panic that will ensue over the next few months, many defectors may return to the Mother at this time. (Thus, the new importance of "family night bible study") This lost sheep campaign is an act of "duty"--- not love. This is a maneuver so that the wbts captives will feel vindicated later when you are totally cut off from their grandiose "paradise plans" and they can say "we tried". It is merely a tactic to alleviate the R and F of future personal guilt toward family members and any sense of loss of family or friends. When the final implementation of the program comes about in a year or so, there will be no second thoughts of you. http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/157356/1.ashx
When I see how oldtimers suggest that the WBTS is simply a money making publishing company, I have to wonder, how??
my congregation donates $100 every month to WTS. Multiply that by say 50% of cong's worldwide - 45000 = 4.5 MILLION every month.
-Coinidentally we just doubled our monthly donation from $50 to $100. Coincidence???
THEN - 2 weeks ago our Circuit donated $3000 to the WTS - there is a circuit assembly every weekend in that complex. How many circuits donate a few grand every assembly? How many circuits meet every weekend the Americas and Europe? if 45000 congs (4500 Circuits) meet twice per year for CA and donate only $1k each time (not 3k like mine just did) that is an additional $9,000,000 per year.
These 2 steady and dependable cash cows total $63,000,000 per year! And this is using 50% of congs, and 1/3 the donation that we just made as benchmarks.
THEN there are DIstrict Donations.
There is tons of money coming in here. the magazines are a means to justify major land purchases for printery expansions.
It strikes me they re playing the math game again!
In the past getting converts to avoid the internet keeps distance between them and information feedback. Whatever the WT says is a one way avenue with little or zero resistance. Hence slow but certain indoctrination - a proven success over the last century and more.
So, with increased public awareness and some taking WT magazines so as to have something to report back to door knockers, what do the WT do? They cut the resistance by controlling information and removing resistance to it. The WT study will only be accessible to JWs and any internet display will breach copyright.
They are following a mathematically proven model with all their shenanigans. And money is easy come by because they have no pay cheques to honour - just 6 million labourers to give time, life and money to their charity for an invisible famine.
