My mother told me about an interesting encounter she had last week with a young male JW who called on her offering her the latest magazines. She did not know him and he appeared not to know her.
In a rare display of assertiveness, she interrupted his spiel, stating that she was just so sick and tired of the magazines going on all the time about how near the end is. To her surprise, he expressed agreement, immediately put the magazines back in his bag and proceeded to talk with my mother about her garden and other everyday things for about half an hour!
My mother's a good judge of character: She concluded that he actually seem relieved that he didn't have to talk about the end of the world and didn't seem to have any desire to discuss the issue anyway.
Without prompting from me, my mother said, "What's going on that they don't want to even defend their beliefs about the end?"
I said to her - perhaps in part jest, but still serious enough - "It's a sure sign of the times when even the Witnesses don't seem to want to insist that the end's just around the corner".
Laughing more than we usually do when talking about the JWs, we both agreed that this new breed of JWs seems far more agreeable than the old breed. I've a hunch though, that they're not so much "agreeable" as just plain old sick and tired of it all.
(My mother was raised a JW in the 1930s but faded in the 1950s after she married my "unbelieving" father. She continued to believe it throughout most of her life (I converted to JWs through her her parents encouragement). In more recent years she's begun questioning it, but in her own quiet, thoughtful way.)