I have just listened to the cutbacks announcement by Tony Morris. How anyone can listen to his statement and not conclude that this is an organisation in serious trouble is utterly beyond me.
The way he described their literature as the "best in the world" before saying they're going to stop producing new articles within a couple of years. And how he tried to make light of the yearbook ending. It's painful to listen to.
I think they can't afford to print any more literature. The money has run out, it's as simple as that. They are desperately hoping for Armageddon because they've run out of ideas and can't find any way out of their financial difficulty.
So I'm going to make a prediction. If I'm right that the major reason they're stopping books, yearbooks, magazines and whatever else, is because they've run out of money, then they can hardly afford to print new Bibles either. So I expect that to be the next thing to be halted.
When they produced the new Bible in 2013 they were apparently in a better financial position, and events have taken a turn for the worse, above and beyond what they anticipated. So they may have planned to produce the new NWT in a hundred languages or more. But can they afford to complete the task? I am very doubtful. There have been rumours about a new German edition and a new Spanish edition. Have they been delayed or cancelled altogether?
They may still have a pile of English Bibles that will last for a while. But when they run out I predict that Watchtower will stop producing Bibles too. They just can't afford it. Goodness knows what kind of excuse they will come up with for not printing the Bible itself. But by that point it may be beyond hiding the fact that the organisation is in financial collapse.
I'm actually a bit worried about the effect all this might have on long term JWs. I think the dissonance between their belief in their organisation, and the fact that it seems to be falling apart, may cause significant psychological distress. I actually feel a bit sorry for the GB too. They seem to be in some distress.