WTBTS seerks total control

by buffalosrfree 11 Replies latest jw friends

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    Maybe I could agree with Aliquot on that. It sounds like the logical and reasonable thing for the power types to do. Maybe - but we really don't know.

    I do know this - every single time so far that the society has tried to liberalize their doctrine and become a little more "mainstream", they seem to flip back and countersteer so hard in the opposite direction that they end up more extreme than they were before.

    Examples: the 1975 apostacy really started as a reform movement inside the GB to try to free the doctrine from that 607 BCE crappola. Franz and the diehards just would not have it, thus setting back reform for a good 20 years.

    Another example would be the temporary relaxation on college education, only to now be slapped down hard - even threatening to remove elders over this.

    And for sure, we are seeing control-freaking on practically the Sonny Bono or Ike Turner levels in today's watchtower society. To a level that witnesses from 30 years ago like me would not even recognize this bunch as being the same religion.

    So, maybe they will see the need to eventually let up a little to avoid losing too many members, but my money would probably go to them tightening down even further, and if very many educated and well-off American or British witnesses leave, well they can always make up the numbers from the third world countries, until those people too get the internet.

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    Well, I just thought of one more example (as per the above) -

    Does anybody else remember the "relaxation" on the disfellowshipping rules that came about somewhere around 1977 or so? It was just around the time that the Body of Elders (and the "Rotation of Elders") got started. We were supposed to "reach out" to deserving disfellowshipped people and sort of "help them back in".

    I think that it probably had something to do with the number of people lost post 1975. Nevertheless, both this liberalization of the DF rules, and the concept of "Rotation of Elders" were put down hard by about 1981 because of the great fear of apostacy after Ray Franz and Ed Dunlap left Bethel.

    Again showing the pattern of "two steps toward mainstream liberalization" but then "five lock-steps back towad totalitarianism"

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