The 1975 Generation---are they still around?

by minimus 47 Replies latest jw friends

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  dozy

  I was just a child then but I remember the atmosphere. My parents got taken in by all the hype & my father ended up giving up his job and selling our house in 1973 after the district convention & moving hundreds of miles away to serve out the last few months "where the need was greater". He showed me a notebook once where he had calculated how the family savings would last till 1976 ( Fred Franz had allowed a degree of wiggle room of a year or so so my father thought it would be prudent ).

  Of course nothing happened & that generation who knew what really happened has pretty much died off now or are very elderly ( my father has died & my mother is late 80's ) & the WTBTS has in true "Big Brother" fashion thoroughly revised their history to imply that people were "running ahead of the Society" and "setting dates". Their main tactic is the usual one that Albert Shroeder of the GB described of not mentioning it & hoping people just forget about it.

  The new JW generation are hardly aware of it nowadays and it is rarely spoken of. I remember about 10 years ago in the ministry a householder mentioned that "you people said the world would end in 1975" and my companion who was doing the door, a MS in his mid 20's , had never even heard of the 1975 JW prediction and was totally baffled. Afterwards in the car I gave him the gist of what happened & the effect on my family & the JWs back then and it was totally new to him. I suggested he read some of the Watchtowers etc around that period but I don't know if he ever bothered.
• 

  TerryWalstrom

  1975 wasn't a thing. It was THE ONLY THING.

  
  

  Have you ever stood and waited for a kettle to boil?

  That was what being a JW was like BEFORE the rumors began.

  What rumors?

  Didn't you hear--the Society says 1975 is the END of human existence.

  Wuh-what?

  ______

  
  

  Jehovah's Witnesses live inside their mind. There is no life outside their imagination. It is a bleak existence in the best of times.

  
  

  So, what does a Dub do to make life more interesting? They gossip and swap fictional stories purported to be actual life events.

  
  

  You've heard those stories about demons, right? Everybody had one to tell. Most of them were lying their asses off, too.

  
  

  So, when that perky little 1975 date popped up like nipples in an air-conditioned nightclub, there was a mating of kerosene and matches all round.

  
  

  Purpose loomed large in our lives!

  
  

  
  

  Imagine standing on that beach when the water rolled back out to sea leaving flopping fish and dry sand the day the world's most terrifying Tsunami made its way toward land--those 1720 feet waves don't look so big way-way out at sea at first--but Baby, they come on faster and faster!

  
  

  The Jehovah's Witness religion became an echo chamber of self-amplifying madness. The boys (old geezers) in Bethel looked out on the horizon and saw what their little earthquake had wrought--and what a surprise it must have been!

  
  

  They caught the fever. . . from themselves. . . fed back in a loop like side-stream smoke from a nasty cigar.

  
  

  It was like two old Fuddy Duddy seniors engaging in sex talk. At first, it's just a reflex. Gradually, something takes over. The heart beats faster and the skin reddens with an erotic flush of anticipations of something so desperately desirable!

  Little by little, there is touching and kissing and disgusting sounds too awful to mention--right up until the horny old fossils land in the big brass bed and tear off each others girdle and suspenders revealing . . . .

  Wrinkles and a flabby dick.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  That is what 1975 really was: wrinkles and a flabby dick.

  After all that hot and heavy, breathless sex talk--it was a dreadful silence of embarrassment.

  
  

  In fact, it was so dispiriting. . . nobody really wanted to discuss what had gone wrong. What is worse than a flabby dick and wrinkles?

  
  

  Teacher! Teacher! I know--I know!

  
  

  Being a JW in 1976 and ever afterward.

  
  

  THAT was worse.

  
  __________________
  
  
• 

  Ucantnome

  Is the older generation still around in the Kingdom Halls or are they much gone?
  

  There are several witnesses that I have had contact with over the past few years, all of them were witnesses in 1975 and ranged from being children and teenagers to people who were in their forties at the time.

  The last elder that I spoke to regarding 1975 disagreed with me concerning what was said and I offered to show him the publications which he declined.

  One who is an active witness agrees with me and has I understand discussed it over the years. They feel that the organization is more careful now with what is said.

  The last witness that I spoke to that invited me to the Kingdom Hall very recently was a witness in 1975 and had a family (we didn't discuss 1975) he is still active

  I believe it was really preached as part of the good news and so I feel surprised that there is a difference of viewpoint.
• 

  Ding

  The 1975 generation passed away on January 1, 1976.

  They forgot all about it.

  When people say it was just the publishers and not the organization that hyped 1975, I think the best answer is, "JWs all believe the same things for the sake of unity. How is it then that so many of them all independently came up with the idea that 1975 would bring Armageddon? When the organization found out these false ideas were spreading among the brothers, why didn't they publish something in the Watchtower to stop it?"
  
• 

  blondie

  My family did not jump on the bandwagon; my aunt bought a house though she did pioneer, my mother and other aunt signed up for retirement and invested in their employer, no one moved where the need was great (was that a term back then?)

  Why not, because they read the scripture in Matthew that said the end would come at a time they did not think it to be (Matthew 24:44). But they did not discuss their belief much with others, it always ended up in an argument and skirting close to being considered an apostate. One CO did tell my aunt that she would die at Armaggedon.

  So 1975 and 1976 came and went and the bullies got quiet and pretended they never made 1975 a fact to act on, some disappeared and we would hear they had been df'd because they talked against the WTS. Others stayed like my family comforted they had been right. But they hung on to the idea that they would not die and would see the end. They are all dead now, and never dying at all was just as much of a lie as the end in 1975.
  
• 

  TD

  I remember a dedication talk for a newly built Kingdom Hall given by N. H. Knorr himself. The year would have been '69 or '70.

  I wish to hell I had a recording of it now. Any doubt that belief in 1975 was encouraged at the very highest levels on down would evaporate in the light of reality.

  --On second thought though, how many Witnesses today would even recognize the man's voice?
• 

  eyeuse2badub

  Yea, I'm still here! I was a 28 year old elder, the Presiding Overseer no less, in 1975. By January of 1976 there was a nearly unanimous unwillingness to even mention the 'great disappointment' among the "faithful". F*ck, I wish I would have had the good sense to run then, but like other fools, I stayed! It was like a pyramid a big scheme (pun intended)!

  As is being mentioned in this OP, most of those still 'in da troof' from that time refuse to admit that the borg really did emphasis 1975 as the "end". It's classic denial to say otherwise. Mad Freddy must be laughing his skinny little ass off!

  just saying!

  eyeuse2badub
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  konceptual99

  Hahaha Terry! Wrinkles and a flabby dick! I'll have to remember that one next time someone is lamenting whatever false expectation they built up.