Love the 1984 quotes:
"We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instance of death we cannot permit any deviation . . . we make the brain perfect before we blow it out."
There's an interesting conflict going on when trying to look out at the WT a few decades from now. On the one hand, you have an organization that thrives on its power and self proclaimed authority. And as has been pointed out - a lot of people love that authoritarian (cultish) environment - they need it. Let me give you an example. I have a relative that became dismayed when the blood policy started changing to allow certain fractions and cell saver etc. She didn't like that she would have to think it out and use her conscience - she asked 'Why don't they just tell us what is and is not ok to take?' Yep -there are people who don't want to think, and sad to say it may very well include ones we love.
Therefore, the Watchtower will probably continue to thrive. I've seen the current young ones at Bethel bask in the authority they get. Someday, they'll be a 'given one' or a GB member. I remember when I was at bethel a young job overseer, only a few years older than me, gave me a warning lecture as part of my training. The whole theme was on Korah rejecting God's appointed men and basically, how it applied to him and my other overseers. i.e. he was telling me that to question him and other bethel work overseers was the same as Korah rejecting Moses. This guy was like 24. Go out 25 years from now, and he will be in his 60s - if still at bethel - will be part of the new GB 3.0.
Now on the other hand. I know very few people of the younger generation of Witnesses (those few that are actually still in) who study, much less think very deeply. Even the elders, very few people I know could explain any difficult teaching using just the Bible. They are in it for the social experience, and the power. But 25 years from now, you're going to have a severe old age crisis on your hands. The org will have 70% 60+ maybe even 65+ 70+ years old and more. Very few of their children will be in the org. If the org thinks there is a severe crisis of lack of young people today - just wait 25 years from now.
Instead of printeries and educational centers, Patterson and WT Farms will be converted into retirement / nursing centers. Same with assembly halls and other properties. Of course, there will be few JWs that will have proper educational training in the medical field, so they'll have to adjust their stance on education so they can get JWs qualified to work at these centers.
So Watchtower will likely be around - but it certainly won't be like it is today. Just remember - the growth phase JWs experienced in the 80s, even in industrial/western nations - those days are gone. Now the only growth is from developing lands and immigrants in the developed nations. As these immigrants and developing nations get more and more access to education and open information, the growth will slow. Look at Japan.
The best the watchtower could hope for would be for something to happen in the middle east, like all the sudden muslim countries start allowing freedom of religion and open missionaries. If something like that happened, the Witnesses would be the first to pounce and of course you'd see growth there, etc.
Doctrinally, I think the 144,000 will be forced to change. Just too many partakers - and in 25 years, with the # of partakers growing at the current rate - it'll be between 30,000 and 50,000 - or at the very least it won't have dropped much at all despite all the annointed today being dead in 25 years.
Communism will probably be limited to N Korea, if even them. China, Russia, and so forth, even the UN will look really different. NATO, WTO, and other organizations will probably have been completely rearranged. What this means for JWs ... two new Revelation books. The problem, though - who will write them? None of today's generation even had a clue or even care about the Prophecy books. Every single JW of this generation dreaded studying these books. 25 years from now, will a new JW visionary emerge from the twitter generation of JWs? Will a 21st century Fred Franz be discovered from among the few remaining 20 and 30 year-old JWs today?
Finally there will still be the bi-polar WT articles - you know one month telling the JWs, especially the older ones how much they are loved and should be appreciated and taken care of for all their faithful years of service. And how the most important thing JWs should be doing are acts of love, which of course will still include the ministry. Then, the next month - will be an article berating the JWs who got carried away with determining the length of of a generation and trying to worry about who it overlaps with and that they should never have been in such a hurry to play with words. Anyone that was disappointed because of the end not coming within the overlapping generation was just jumping ahead and should never have placed such an emphasis on time frames - this was never the governing body's intentions and anybody that made an issue over it has nobody to blame but themselves for disappointment.
Toast in 5 years...... To many people are finding out what the Watchtower Org. is hiding behind... The monkey died the show is over.