The Watchtower Study to be considered this Sunday, August 3, 2014 (using the magazine dated May 15, 2014), titled “Are You Moving Ahead With Jehovah’s Organization?,” in paragraph seven (on pages 27-28), talks about the number of people baptized in recent years:
7 Where do those making up the great crowd come from? They are being brought together because of what Jesus foretold as part of the sign of his presence. He said: “This good news of the Kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.” (Matt. 24:14) In these last days, this is the chief work of God’s organization. Because of the global preaching and teaching activity of Jehovah’s Witnesses, millions of people have learned to worship God “with spirit and truth.” (John 4:23, 24) For example, in a recent ten-year period—during the service years of 2003 through 2012—more than 2,707,000 individuals were baptized in symbol of their dedication to God. Worldwide, there are now well over 7,900,000 Witnesses, with millions more associating with them, especially during the annual observance of the Memorial. We do not boast in numbers, for it is ‘God who keeps making things grow.’ (1 Cor. 3:5-7) Nevertheless, it is evident that the great crowd is growing and becoming greater with each passing year.
Now, I plan to give a comment on that paragraph seven and provide some expanded and poignant statistics which I have gathered from the Web page “http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php” – it should be an interesting Sunday meeting, considering that I will be sitting with my strongly-JW parents! (They are pioneering this month, and my dad is a longtime, well-known elder in our area.) I’ll let you know how it went afterward. Here is my little summary which I will use in my comment:
WITHIN JW COMMUNITY
TOTAL MISSING (average):
1986 to 1995: 12%/yr.
1996 to 2005: 41%/yr.
Number Baptized Who Stop Publishing/Inactive
(baptism minus increase):
1981 to 2013: 80,000/yr.
Disfellowshipped:
1992: ≈1%/yr. (avg.) (Watchtower, 1992, July 1, p. 19)
1985: 1.28%/yr. (Watchtower, 1986, Jan. 1, p. 13)
Reinstated: 0.33%/yr. (avg.) (Watchtower, 1974, Aug. 1, p. 466;
Watchtower, 1960, Dec. 1, p. 728)
WORLD POPULATION
World Population Growth: 1.2%/yr. (200,000 born per day)
World Average Death Rate: 0.85%/yr.