Did the jw's leadership ever apologize for 1975?

by dugout 44 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Finkelstein

  Nathan Knorr to Fred Franz in the late 1960's ....

  "Are you sure we should try this 6000 year dating scheme, some people might remember Brother Russell used this at the turn of the century 50 years ago ?"

  Fred ......"Well the Watchtower didn't have that much circulation back then and most of the books and magazines are long out of print. We'll hype it up a bit more, I'm sure very few will take notice".

  "Besides it will look attractive on the front cover of the Awake and Watchtower"
  

  Nathan ...... "Ok Fred lets see what we can come up with, you may be on to something"

  Fred ...... "Remember are readership base aren't exactly Bible scholars are they ?

  Nathan ...... " Ha ha.. ya I know "
  
• 

  Vidiot

  "Mistakes were made (but not by us)"...

  ...weasel-wording to set your watch to.
• 

  Finkelstein

  Knorr and Franz didn't make a mistake though , they were out right calculated lies drawn out the vault of past WTS proclamations, call it pandering to the public's ignorance.

  One thing religious charlatans exploit is the perceived virtue of religious expression.
  
• 

  em1913

  I got involved during what I later learned was the aftermath of 1975 -- and I never knew that the 1975 fiasco ever even existed so far as my congregation was concerned. It was all straight down the memory hole -- elders who had been on the front lines in the middle of it walked around as though absolutely nothing had ever happened. The first I ever heard of it was, I think, in the Time magazine article about Ray Franz's banishment in 1982, and reading that was like being hit across the face with a wet towel.

  I never asked the elders about it, but I dug into the Bound Volumes like a good Witness until I managed to convince myself that it was all a big misunderstanding. It got a lot harder to keep that up when I got around to reading the "Freedom Of The Sons of God" book, although Freddie's prose was obtuse enough to justify the "we're not saying, but this couuuuuuuuld happen." explanation.
• 

  Vidiot

  @ em1913...

  Oh yeah, credit where credit's due... ol' Fred Franz had some skills.

  It has, IMO, indirectly resulted in another long-term problem the Org has now, actually...

  ...the WT's "Oracle" never left any kind of protege when he kicked the bucket, so there's no one remaining with his writing ability, and the rank-and-file are stuck with "Look, Caleb, look... see Sophia preach" (yes, I'm aware there's other reasons for that too, but his absence is a factor)...

  ...nor do they have anyone with the creative or theological skill to reinterpret WT eschatology for the 21st Century, so they're stuck with Fred's decades-old, Cold-War-centric End-Times script with powerless or nonexistent bad guys and a sequence of events that's become increasingly implausible (geopolitically speaking) with the continued passage of time.
• 

  NewYork44M

  ...nor do they have anyone with the creative or theological skill to reinterpret WT
  eschatology for the 21st Century, so they're stuck with a decades-old, Cold-War-centric End-Times

  This explains the silly undiscernable overlapping generation explanation to justify that the end did not come within the generation of 1914.
  
• 

  em1913

  Yep, you could tell even in the 80s, when Freddie was clearly not in the thick of things anymore, that the publications were getting more and more watered-down to, at best, a junior-high level mentality. I remember the last time one of the old "large size" books was featured in the Book Study, the "Man's Salvation" book, which must have been 1984 or so -- we only studied *part* of it, because, you know, it was nine years old and OLD LIGHT and all that -- and everyone sat around afterward talking about how "deep" it was.

  Well, that was "deep" as in sense of the meanderings of an odd old man's odd old mind, but it did at least try and present ideas in a way somewhat more advanced than the "See Dick And Jane In Paradise, Fill The Earth Dick and Jane, Fill the Earth" style of the Live Forever book and other publications of that period. I was embarassed to offer that kind of stuff at the door because it looked and read like something you'd give to a five year old to play with in the back seat on a long car ride.

  I've not set foot in a KH since 1988, but from the stuff I've seen over the years lurking on this board, and from the occasional Newer Publication I've stumbled on at a laundromat or picked up off the floor of a subway station, the "Live Forever" book looks like a work of high theological art by comparison.
  
• 

  Finkelstein

  Good point Vidiot
  

  The WTS's doctrines are unquestionably interrelated, they have to be in sense to make those previous doctrines like honest and truthful.

  The WTS are pushed to support them at all importance or the whole stature or image of the organization being guided by god's holy spirit falls down.

  No no no sinful men never made the doctrines of the WTS

  We are the righteous and true religion, those others are false influenced and inspired from Satan.

  We have Jehovah's blessings and have been chosen as his earthly arrangement.
  
• 

  LongHairGal

  DUGOUT:

  No, they never apologized and just made it sound like the members came to the wrong conclusion on their own 🙄.

  I came in after ‘75 and it was like it never happened because it was never mentioned. I only got curious because somebody in my hall referred to somebody’s inactive mom as a ‘75er. I wondered what it meant and I did a little digging. Never saw anything that looked like the religion ever took the blame for this fiasco.
• 

  Finkelstein

  One thing religious leaders within one organization never try and do is expose their inner corruption and lies , there is presence of loyalty to those participating or past participants.