You have to understand three things to comprehend the significance of 1975.
1975 was the end of the Watchtower Society as we who lived in the 50's and 60's once knew it. It would forever change because it was exposed for all the world to see as a group of liars and deceived dupes.
It all began with a Baptist farmer named William Miller who sat down with only his bible and a concordance and a crackpot idea that a
a "day for a year" and the Gentile Times meant something profound which would effect his own day and time. He emerged from a 5 year study convinced (and able to convince others) that Jesus was about to return in October 22, 1844
Thousands heard and believed and split with mainstream churches as they awaited the end of the world. But, nothing happened and the Great Disappointment started a movement that has yet to end among "true believers". Miller's ideas sounded so good and neat and perfect there were people who just simply could not make themselves accept that they were false!
1. Jehovah's Witnesses would never have existed had William Miller's ironclad "proofs" about JESUS' 2nd coming not caught the public's fancy.
2.Charles Taze Russell's version of Adventism was one of many that tried to "save" Miller's weird calculations and make them actually work.
3.Fred Franz was the last man standing with the intellect and the True Believer mentality who could try yet again to make Miller's crackpot chronology (retro-fitted) come true one last time.
Most of the JW's alive in the 60's only heard about the failed prediction that came before they joined. They smiled and paid little attention to previous failures because they themselves never had to live through the awful letdown and embarassments. But, there were older JW's who actually had lived through those events. Keep that in mind.
Next, you must realize that in a religion such as Jehovah's Witnesses the entire focus is on URGENCY. Something is going to happen soon.
You constantly live with that drumbeat of Armageddon just up ahead. That is why you preach door to door. The end is very very near!
Keep that in mind.
Unlike mainstream Christianity, Jehovah's Witnesses are almost entirely mindful that Jesus has already come back and is barely able to restrain the forces of Armageddon until the door to door work is ended and the last sheep is separated from the last goat!
With this in mind we have to imagine a moment in time when you go from "THEORY" to "ACTUALITY"! Suddenly, overnight there is a changing of gears, attitudes, excitement, anticipation and reality sets in: THIS IS REALLY GOING TO HAPPEN!
The triggering event was Freddy Franz's cranking up the volume on his Babylon the Great has Fallen--God's Kingdom Rules! book.
In that book Franz argues a brand spanking new method of figuring William Miller's Gentile times claptrap gimmick by coming up with ABSOLUTE DATES. This idea pinned down two dates in history where secular and biblical events came together to produce verifiable certainty about something historical. Why?
This seemed to give a link in the Old Testament and a link in the New Testament you could really, really wrap other dates around and NOT GO WRONG. In reality, it was just a false reassurance and, like I said, a gimmick.
By the time the new blue book THE TRUTH THAT LEADS TO ETERNAL LIFE was released in 1968 something new and exciting was creating buzz in the JW community! It was electrifying!!
You had to be there. You had to hear the excitement in the brother's voices when they put two and two together. The Society had come right and thrown the switch signalling when the Thousand Year Reign of Christ would start! This logically implied Armageddon would have to come BEFORE then!
The culminating event was referred to as the END of 6,000 years of human existence on earth!
Why is this so exciting?
Think about it. A perfect "creation" day was said by the Watchtower to be 7,000 years long. The thousand year reign of Christ would be the 7th day. Man was created on the 6th day.
In case you don't get it: Jehovah's purpose for man would be realized at the end of the 6th creative day and then Jesus Christ would rule for a thousand years!
JW's were trained to "read into" these explanations, dates and correspondencies the IMPLICATIONS themselves. Why? Because everything JW's said and did was already in anticipation of these end times events!
All you had to do was shift into high gear and understand you had only 7 years left (in 1968) to complete the preaching work before Armageddon came in 1975! Why? The closing of the 6th day of creation would be followed by paradise on earth!!
It was the signal given in the Truth book that triggered the chain of emotional outbursts that ran like high-voltage current through every Kingdom Hall on planet earth!
I was in Federal Prison when the Truth Book came out. I remember vividly the wild excitement bordering on hysteria that we might be caught in the Great Tribulation while locked up inside a prison!!! How would we survive??/
It was a tremendous topic of speculation, But, those of you who did not live through these events cannot image WHY there was so much rampant speculation. It was because this was a LIFE OR DEATH moment! You had to move. You had to perform. You had to get things exactly right or you would end up destroyed within seven years at Armageddon!!! So, why wouldn't you go crazy speculating???
When the giant tidal wave of public response hit the Watchtower in Brooklyn it must have practically overwhelmed them with astonishment what Franz had now caused!! I don't think any of them had a clue there would be such a visceral reaction and feedback!!
Please read this part carefully: The staid, placid, boring, workaday grunts at Bethel were taken by surprise and worked into a frenzy themselves in a kind of MASS HYSTERIA. It was like a nuclear reactor with feedback and chain reactions back and forth as the energy level grew dynamically and geometrically until nobody could stop it!!
This was what everybody was living for! I think the normally conservative people at the top (Nathan Knorr especially) probably called Freddy Franz into his office and demanded to know if he was mad or dead serious about 1975! Was he willing to lay it all on the line and risk public humiliation yet again with this 6,000 years of human existence thing??
Fred Franz believed his own calculations! He was the ultimate conman who conned his own self! He said "yes" and Knorr backed him up 100%
All the while cautioning everybody to only write and say things in the quiet, firm, assured manner. They decided to keep the kettle on high boil.
The brothers in the Kingdom Halls did all the rest!
It was a time like no other I've ever experienced before or since.
People got very very serious about what they were doing! THIS WAS THE REAL THING!
The closer to 1975 you got the higher the expectations got! Even the travelling circuit sevants gave talks that made clear it would all be over very shortly. You could only hang on to the dashing engine as it sped toward destruction or get left behind.
The hysteria, the enthusiasm and the emotional high of those 7 years exactly mirrored William Miller's October 22, 1844 predictions and Judge Rutheford's 1925 predictions. It could not be stopped until it burnt itself out in strained credulity and dashed hopes and cognitive dissonance and the blame game would begin.
The close the days got to 1975 the more terrified the Governing Body got in Brooklyn that this too would fail. They hedged their bets because a certain rationl sanity remained. They took their foot off the pedal and sent up trial balloons of "explantion" as to why nothing happened. They said we don't KNOW FOR SURE how long Adam was by himself in Eden before Eve was created. This gap of time might add a few months to the date. Blah blah blah.
1975 came and went and NOTHING happend. I mean abso-fucking-lutely NOTHING happened. At all. No way. Zip. Nada.
It is like trying to sneeze for seven years and you can't. It's like screwing like rabbits for seven years and you can't climax at the end of it because you are so red and raw and exhausted and pent up and spent with effort and failure. You just suddenly stop. You look around and see faces full of bewilderment everywhere that mirror your own.
True Believers hung in there. The Wait and See people just laid back and pretended they weren't carried away. The Governing Body must have had a meltdown. What to do? What to say? They must have stared unbelievingly at Fred Franz's face and asked a silent "why?"
What could he say? He'd been through it all before. Survival kicked in. He backtracked. He waffled. He tacked and veered and came up with plausible deniability. But, make no mistake, my friends---he was stunned as well!!
That's when things got awfully quiet. The room was silent and the days were long and only the sound of a mocking clock ticking in the background could be heard for a long while.
It would be several years before anybody could even admit that NOTHING happened. Some people wised up and saw they were in a cult of false prophets. Others went into a mind spin and pretended nothing had actually been said.
Amazing. Human nature.
Today, you'd swear it was a different kind of non-event. Ask any Jehovah's Witness about 1975 and they'll just shrug it away like it was almost nothing but a few over zealous people getting carried away.
But, don't you believe it, my friends. Don't ever believe it. People were screwed, lied to and twisted into a fucking knot over this gigantic piece of incredible lunacy by Fred Franz.
This religion was never the same after 1975. It started turning sour and cold and insular and---finally--paranoid and fascist until it closed up like an iron fist and those in the palm of that cold cold hand were squeezed into prisoner's of cult who could not mentally escape into broad daylight ever again.
My former best friend is still in the clutches of those lying, deceiving bastards! One half of his brain remembers and understands he was misled. The other half of his brain is totally delusional to the point he'll excuse anything now.
What a sad and dramatic end to a lunatic brain fart started in the 1800's by a Baptist farmer named William Miller!