by Hobo Ken 42 Replies latest jw friends
I am sure you are right Hoppie (and Hobo),
They have to distance themselves because there Is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER to support a choosing in 1919.Their problem is that"distancing" takes time,the click of a mouse does not,so we will see more strong advice against Internet use I expect.
Love
Wobble
It's the same trick that they've always used. The gradually mention something less and less until they stop mentioning it all together. The desired effect is achieved when the R & F just forget all about what ever it is they want to unhook themselves from. Out of sight , out of mind they say.
ken im into your blog & encounters with the elders, cant wait for june??!! is that when you will release the next installment.!?
( its like waiting for the next harry potter movie)
Good points mentioned. I too think they will have to slowly and carefully move away from their BS dates. This way they will claim the light was starting to shine a while back and as they finally tell watchtower witnesses that 1914 is not applicable it will be some years from now and witnesses will be used to the fact that 1914 hasn't been mentioned for a time. If they do it gradually they may only loose a small number of followers who will have their mind open to the deception whereas the rest will just view this as a new light that the useless gb just revealed to them and they will rejoice.
But a problem is they will have to replace 1914 with something else otherwise if that's not the start of the end - what is? Why go out and preach for the leaders? Will they feel that they have enough of the membership that their funds will continue to support them without the need to grow? Without a date implanted how many will feel the need to go and preach? Maybe they will continue saying that the end is near but the date is gone just as there really wasn't a starting date for first century fulfillment of last days of the Jewsih state.
They have to decieve the rank and file in a manner of most turning the lie into a positive spin, pointing to those of us who know better and saying "see, our gb corrects the mistakes unlike other religions, Jehovah corrects things in his due time!" How will gb spin the doctrine to get witnesses to contribute more if the growth won't be occurring and especially if they start getting taxed on their sales or properties?
I wonder if they are going to pick a new starting point, like having Armageddon supposedly happening in 2034. From then, they can build the scene that 2034 is the beginning of the end, starting again from there. Of course, that means they will need to redefine 607 or what "times" actually means.
As for arguing that there are not 7 million witlesses around, I will give it my all. I believe there are quite a few fake time slips among the 7 million. Either they did no field circus at all but turned in a fake slip, or the hounder (under pressure from the hounder-hounder) turned in a fake slip so it would not be missing. There are also a lot of people that are in it because of pressure (if they quit, they will be hounded and possibly never see their family again). And, if you have a baby out in field circus, why not put in an extra slip for the baby to count toward that 7 million?
I would like to see a TCMP style audit on that number. I wonder how many witlesses there would actually be if every fake slip, duplicate, miscounted slip, or slip turned in because of severe pressure or on behalf of small children would be thrown out. I bet it would be quite a bit less than 7 million.
Surprisingly good post, Hobo.
Interesting indeed.
Imo, 1919 is nothing but an embarrassing and useless technicality in the mind of the vast majority of current Witnesses. Once a religion is established, who really cares for a precise theoretical justification of its authority system? If you choose to be (or remain) there, that's how it works: whoever is the boss is the boss.
Now 1914 (still imo) is a completely different matter. The point is neither how the WT got it (the great pyramid and 606 BC are long forgotten already, and it still works) nor even what it actually got (the "end," not beginning of last days), but simply that it got something. To the average Witness, this "something" boils down to "the WT predicted the date of WWI as the beginning of the end" -- historically false on both points, but quite useful as it still works as and of itself as a "sign" or "miracle" authenticating the organisation as a whole. As long as it works with 1914 only, no need to bother with 1919 which can only instill doubts. Now whether it could work without 1914 I'm not sure... yet.
100 years earlier in 1814 Napoleon abdicated the throne. Many of his opposers pictured him as satan. I wonder if 1914 was subconsciously embedded in consciousness in commemoration of Napoleon's ouster from heavenly imperial power. Makes more uncanny sense to me than WTS bible chronology
edit:
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/romantic/topic_5/welcome.htm
| Byron identified another alter ego in the towering historical figure of Napoleon Bonaparte, who to the contemporary imagination combined, in Satan’s manner, moral culpability with awe-inspiring power and grandeur. Between 1795, when Napoleon took command of the armies of France, and 1815, when defeat at Waterloo banished him from Europe to his final exile, patriotic supporters of Britain’s war effort represented Napoleon as an infernal, blood-thirsty monster. These demonizing representations frequently alluded to the example of Milton’s “enemy of mankind,” as William Wordsworth did in an 1809 sonnet, “Look now on that Adventurer,” and George Cruikshank did in an 1815 cartoon depicting the colossus in exile on the tiny island of St. Helena. Satanizing Napoleon made for effective wartime propaganda because it invoked an already established plot, a narrative of inevitable downfall. Yet Byron’s complex response to the man, worked out over the entire body of his work, yields a contrasting account of history—and also, and in particular in the “ Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte ” he wrote following Napoleon’s abdication, a contrasting account of Milton’s fallen angel. To Byron, Napoleon represents both a figure of heroic aspiration and someone who has been shamefully mastered by his own passions—both a conqueror and, after Waterloo, a captive: Napoleon thus becomes as much the occasion for psychological analysis as for moral condemnation. There was more than a touch of self-projection in this account. (At a tongue-in-cheek moment in canto 11 of Don Juan, Byron dubs himself “the grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme.”) The characteristic doubleness of the Byronic hero is dramatized in the story of Napoleon’s venturesome rise and inglorious fall. |
If you choose to be (or remain) there, that's how it works: whoever is the boss is the boss.
This is a very good point, hence Hobo's brother saying we shouldn't be dogmatic about it. I reckon most JWs don't really care about the roots and origins of their religion. They only care about their next social outing, who's bitching about who behind who's back, the fact they don't need to "worship the Trinity" and whether the weather is going to be kind at this year's convention.
ql: not sure how your new light would fare this side of the Channel... you know, "Waterloo" translates "Austerlitz" as far as railroad stations are concerned.
