I Remember........

by pontoon 2 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  pontoon

  When my mom first started to study in the 1960's the first KH and congregation we went to was a big open room over a grocery store. I remember in the 1970's having circuit assemblies in rented facilities the local brothers would arrange for. I remember three regular accounts, donations for the society, donations for the local congregation/KH, and the literature account. If the congregation wanted to build a contribution box could be set to get started and the congregation could get a loan commercially or from the corporation. I was in a congregation years ago that was paid for and maintained by the locals, payed off mortgage. It was a comfortable hall, good shape and we had pride in it and enjoyed our work days at the hall. It was ours, we owned it. Some circuit Overseer said it didn't meet Corporation standards, we sold it to another church (they were very happy to get it and are still there) and built new.

  I don't even know what I am trying to say except that in those older day we were better and I don't know how it all went from decisions being made locally and KH's owned by the people who paid for them to what it is today, million dollar KH's and multi-million dollar assembly halls all for the purpose of enriching the corporation. So that has been the purpose or goal of the corporation, becoming a real estate empire. Religion was and is just the tool the corporation is using to accomplish it, Was all this planned out from about the mid 1970's and did the men running the corporation knowing it would take years to accomplish?

  I'm rambling, Good night.
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  Diogenesister

  Good point. Your not rambling at all. I think it's the central question we all want to know.

  That it has become a corporation the main purpose of which is to make money seems obvious on the outside looking in. As a believer that would seem shocking, indeed absurd.

  Once you become fully awake you wonder Is, or was, there humans controlling the Org for nefarious purpose, and if so at what point did they gain control? Or has it always been thus?

  Or, and this I'm more inclined to believe, has the body corporate taken on a life of its own, the workers all being the famously put " captives of a concept"?
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  days of future passed

  I think along the lines of - Russell spinning his own crazy thoughts into a racket, and yet believing it in the end. And once it took off, you have the clever charlatan like Rutherford who knew what a money maker it could be, taking control.

  So it is like a two headed dragon. Deluded men who believe they are anointed and making decisions that affect millions are one side. The other is just cold calculating businessmen with probably a few psychopaths and sociopaths thrown in. You'd be surprised how often psychopaths get up the ladder in the business world as well as lawyers. They don't have a conscience to bother them.