Oh dear. I had a conversation with a JW elder on-line about this very thing a couple of years ago. I won't bore you with the entire conversation, but here's part of it on Amazon in a book about the WTS:
JW: As for the so-called 1975 fiasco, I was there and a presiding overseer/presiding pastor of a congregation and I KNOW hat was said and taught. NO statement saying 1975 would be the End, NO statement saying that an Angel said, in a vision we were told, etc. In fact note what was said to us.
At a convention held in Baltimore, Maryland, F. W. Franz gave the concluding talk. He began by saying: "Just before I got on the platform a young man came to me and said, `Say, what does this 1975 mean?'" Brother Franz then referred to the many questions that had arisen as to whether the material in the new book meant that by 1975 Armageddon would be finished, and Satan would be bound. He stated, in essence: `It could. But we are not saying. All things are possible with God. But we are not saying. And don't any of you be specific in saying anything that is going to happen between now and 1975. But the big point of it all is this, dear friends: Time is short. Time is running out, no question about that.' Notice: "But we are not saying, And don't any of you be specific in saying anything that is going to happen between now and 1975."
That was our official position. What some may have said is beyond anyone's control, but the WTS NEVER made the claim Rhodes and others try to infer we did.
Me: Did you even bother reading what I wrote? I gave you the SPECIFIC example of what Wisconsin Sheboygan District Overseer Brother Charles Sunutko SAID to the audience of Witnesses during a PUBLIC TALK in 1967. If you somehow missed this, this is what was said:
"...Well now, as Jehovah's Witnesses, as runners, even though some of us have become a little weary, it almost seems as though Jehovah has provided meat in due season. Because he's held up before all of us, a new goal. A new year. Something to reach out for and it just seems it has given all of us so much more energy and power in this final burst of speed to the finish line. And that's the year 1975. ... Well, we don't have to guess what the year 1975 means if we read the Watchtower. ...And don't wait 'till 1975. The door is going to be shut before then....As one brother put it, "Stay alive to Seventy-Five..."
What part of that don't you get? If the Organization never claimed anything about 1975, then where did all the Witnesses get this idea from in the first place? Huh? And please don't bother trying to say that he `must have said this on his own', because as a District Overseer, he would have the outline of his talk that came straight out of Brooklyn Bethel. It.was.said and for you to SIT there and type a bold-faced LIE trying to claim that the Organization never stated that 1975 would be the end just demonstrates the depth of your delusions and the extent you will go to in order to cover up their false
predictions.
No Witness is allowed to make independent predictions, especially by way of a public talk. Anyone who said something so outrageous as the District Overseer said above without the full approval of the Bethel, would have been in major trouble for daring to go beyond what the Governing Body approved of and you and I both know it. He probably would have been disfellowshipped for `apostasy' for telling thousands of Witnesses that Armageddon was coming in 1975 if the Governing Body didn't whole-heartedly approve of him saying that.
I have asked you repeatedly the same question which you have so far refused to answer: How can someone have God's Holy Spirit on them, call themselves 'prophets' (even in the basic sense as you are trying to claim), tell people that The End is right around the corner for the past 130 years, print countless books and magazine that in fact, DO try to predict the future, but claim you don't call yourselves "prophets? '
JW: if as you seem to think he is repeating what he was told to say by the GB (Governing Body of JW's) then it contradicted the clear quote I gave from the V.P. (GB member) Of the WTS, so that doesn't fit either. If it had been a manuscript he and every D.O. would have said exactly the same
thing and they didn't. It wasn't said at the District Convention I attended that year, nor at the one my wife, then much younger and not married to me, attended. It was an isolated instance, if true, he said what he wanted not what he was told to say. Outlines gave general direction and the speaker filled in with his thoughts. That has changed now and virtually every talk is a manuscript, because some went too far with their own thoughts.
How would you know any of this? Your name indicates a woman and you would not have been a servant where such matters were discussed. You would not have been a speaker, as I was, where a misstep will get you counseled about it but NOT disfellowshipped. The only way he would be disfellowshipped would have been if he insisted he was right and the WTS wrong and he was going to teach that. Then after repeated counsel he would have been removed as a servant/elder/pastor.
Me: what you have is called 'selective amnesia' where you choose to pointedly ignore written documentation from that time because it's inconvenient and embarassing for you. Every Witness in the late 1960s and early 1970s knows that there was a huge build-up to 1975 and that this idea came from what was written in the literature and what was said from the platform. This was NOT an 'isolated' case as you are pathetically trying to assert---it happened in all congregations and you and I both know it. The fact that you are lying through your teeth by trying to state that it didn't happen, that it was only a few people who were going out on their own and promoting this idea, is nauseating and incredibly deceitful. I believe though, you call it "theocratic warfare" (roll of eyes).
This was no isolated case. I know many Witnesses from many parts of North America and even Europe who remember those years leading up to 1975. Some, like you, choose to have the selective amnesia by ignoring all the quotes that were in the literature at the time that most definitely pointed to 1975 as being "The End", but most realize that Organization made predictions that they should have never made. After they lost a tremendous number of followers in the following years, even the top guns were forced to acknowledge that they were at least partially to blame for the fiasco:
"With the appearance of the book Life Everlasting-in Freedom of the Sons of God, and its comments as to how appropriate it would be for the millennial reign of Christ to parallel the seventh millennium of man's existence, considerable expectation was aroused regarding the year 1975. ... Unfortunately, however, along with such cautionary information, there were other statements published that implied that such realization of hopes by that year was more of a probability than a mere possibility." Watchtower 1980 Mar 15 p.17
So please don't sit there and try to tell me that what the District Overseer said at the assembly was only an 'isolated' case. Clearly, as the statement above shows, the Organization itself promoted this idea.
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Didn't hear back from the asshole after this.
