Okay, that new video about 1975 has got people talking, and yes, the child abuse cases will always require us to remain vigilant...But after my having left in the late 1980s/early 1990s, it seems all the real "exciting" stuff is gone.
When I left the Witnesses were still preaching that the "generation that was old enough to understand the events of 1914" will not pass away before Armageddon comes. NO BLOOD cards were our badges (not that stupid JW logo) and that card meant what it said, "no blood"! The number of the dwindling anointed remnant was an official time indicator on how soon the end would come. The "faithful and discreet slave" was a "class" made up of the anointed remnant that was also "the prophet" like Ezekiel in these last days. We were making converts from the outside world, baptizing 600-800 at conventions, not just born-ins (who by the way were not encouraged to get baptized until they were in their late teens).
There were in-depth books of study (with few pictures), a network of complex types and anti-types in Scripture that highlighted the privilege of working with the anointed (which were quite old, and consisted of people who could remember Russell and Rutherford and the days before there was a Governing Body). The 1975 teaching was real--everyone believed in it! Even afterwards, there was a new surge in activity from 1980-1990 where the work was really speeding up and new people were coming in every day. We were constantly putting the world on notice by passing international "world-shaking" resolutions of judgment and printing these out and warning the world that it was going to end any moment now. So many were going out in field service so often that we feared we might be over working some territories. I kid you not!
It was truly a crazy cult, and the Kool-Aid was sweet and looked like real poison, and we were proud to be drinking it and constantly said how wonderful it was to be "brainwashed" to cleanse ourselves of the world's thinking!
And it was damn hard to convince people inside that it was a cult, so you had to be sure you had lots of logic and Scriptures and know precisely where and what Watchtower publications said this and that to help someone out.
Today the current Governing Body has turned the spotlight upon themselves. They've done away with the in-depth teachings, and have become a clown show of denial, covering up this and that, making excuses for the past, burying yesterday and turning the current Witnesses into boring ignoramuses.
It's got so boring that even on sites like this we are reduced to arguing with one another, exJW against exJW, trying to attack each other's new life and new set of convictions after the Watchtower. Why? There's nothing really else to talk about.
People from the outside aren't coming in droves anymore to become Witnesses. The current generation of JWs isn't educated in Biblical study as we were in the past, so there's nothing much to discuss anymore on an academic level. Born-ins who leave have no experience with what religion is really like because they weren't converts with experience from the outside world to compare how things were like going in and coming out. (Not that there's anything wrong with being an exJW born-in.)
So it's just mostly black and white on how they feel about the religion with them or when it comes to discussing religion in general...in other words, there's no work you have to do to convince them on the silliness of it all and they don't care to discuss it anyway.
So we're left with taking our anger out on one another sometimes, biting and backbiting others we should be supporting after leaving the Witnesses, never stopping to realize that the people we should be arguing with are not each other but with the Witnesses.
And then the cycle just repeats because the religion now is just boring. The JW videos are just decorations to distract people from the fact that there's nothing really there. They don't even serve "Kool-Aid" anymore. You have to "download the recipe" yourself, go out and buy all the ingredients yourself, and then you are left to drink something that doesn't taste anything like the Watchtower before 1992 when Franz (likely the last real link to the past) was still around.
The current JW website, the video presentations at conventions, all are just "pony shows." Why all the glitter? So you don't comment that not even 100 or even 50 or maybe not even 20 are getting baptized and that you aren't really a religion of public door-to-door Witnesses anymore. So they bring out a pony with sparkles to make you "ooo" and "ahhh," then they escort it offstage where it immediately dies because they only have enough money to buy a pony on its last leg.
I have finally looked over their website and videos and watched what we discuss here and how we are reduced to fighting each other because there's no one there to fight. The "new" JW religion is a boring closet of skeletons. I've been thinking about this the past few days after looking over everything, and frankly I don't care about them anymore. I don't even think I have anything more to add to disprove Watchtower teachings as there's not really anything left to discuss. (I think we rarely discuss anything truly Watchtower related as much as we discuss other subjects here.)
It's no one's fault. The JW religion has just become...well, it's just sitting there. I like most of the people here, very grateful to Simon, love comments from people like Blondie and others, but what's supposed to be our main subject of discussion? Look at it! It's just a carcass now.
It's just a stupid, nothing religion that the world rarely thinks of anymore. Even the jokes about them are rarely heard. Sure it would be nice to see it all come tumbling down and to get our remaining loved ones out, but we have all known that some are going to stay on the sinking ship as it goes down.
It's going down. These people that are still there, they might be the equivalent of the Waco folks who died in the fire. I'm not saying give up all hope just yet. But at least to me it seems that all we have left of the religion to discuss are the antics of the Governing Body to sneer at, and lately I feel like I would rather spend my time having bamboo shoots shoved under my fingernails.
At least then I wouldn't be yawning.
