1975 and the Jehovah's Witnesses

[Anna]

3 minutes ago, Noble Berean said:

Keep from becoming causes for stumbling to Jews as well as Greeks and to the congregation of God, just as I am trying to please all people in all things, not seeking my own advantage, but that of the many, so that they may be saved."

Good scripture, but to be honest not sure how it would apply to disfellowshipping, since that is a protective and disciplinary action, which is also meant to bring the person back. 

But maybe we should make this another topic. The video you speak about. I still haven't been able to put my finger on what it is that doesn't sound right about this whole family shunning business, and I wouldn't mind exploring it some more....

P.S. I think if the daughter would be terminally ill, that would be an entirely different kettle of fish

[Noble Berean]

4 minutes ago, Anna said:

Good scripture, but to be honest not sure how it would apply to disfellowshipping, since that is a protective and disciplinary action, which is also meant to bring the person back. 

If our goal is to get people back, why would we treat them like they don't exist at our meetings? Outside of the meetings I can understand why our association should be limited, but our meetings seem like the one place where we should be supporting a spiritually weak individual.

13 minutes ago, Anna said:

But maybe we should make this another topic.

Sorry how do I go about that?

[JW Insider]

15 hours ago, AllenSmith said:

I found the excitement of the 6000 years more appealing than the prevailing wind of speculation, which was uttered through the platforms.

I think I understand the sentiment of this first idea, that there was something appealing about being able to know the Bible's "historical sweep" of 6,000 years, and even the fact that the Bible had left enough internal evidence to count large unbroken portions of this chronology without any required references to secular support. (From Adam to Zedekiah, as it were.)  With a little help from interpretation and some secular "tent-pins" we could even reach from Adam to Jesus and fit all this into a chronological framework that included the Creation, the Flood, the Exodus, the Davidic kingdom, the coming of the Messiah, the destruction of Jerusalem and it's Temple, The Return/Rebuilding, second destruction in 70 C.E., the probable timing of Paul's missionary journeys, etc.

I was not the type of person back in 1966 to think that any of us were supposed to speculate. I heard the talk about 1975 at the 1966 summer district convention, probably twice. I thought that maturity meant that we studied the publications, reasoned on them, and then made solid decisions based on accurate knowledge. My brother was 11 and I was 9 and we both were assigned in 1966 to read the book "Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God." and "Things in which it is Impossible for God to Lie." If we read these books and studied all the baptism questions in the book "Your Word is a Lamp to My Foot" then we would both be ready for baptism in the spring 1967 circuit assembly, although we both waited until the summer convention. I don't remember personally thinking much about 1975 back in 1966 even when I read the "Life Everlasting" book that covered the topic. I read it as saying that we should be ready for Armageddon because it could happen sooner than we think. The goal, I thought, was to remind those who weren't taking Armageddon seriously, to remember that even the chronology shows that it might be "later than you think." I really didn't think that anyone was supposed to read the book and begin saying that Armageddon was going to happen in 1975.

15 hours ago, AllenSmith said:

Perhaps, in your culture it was different, but in mine, there was no hysteria attached.

I don't recall any "hysteria" either. There were those who took it more seriously than others, but prior to 1975, I don't really remember anyone trying to point out exactly why they were taking it more seriously based on specific wording in the publications that they had caught and other people had missed. My mother was of the opinion that Armageddon would more likely take place in 1974 or 1976 because if it happened in 1975 that's when everyone would be expecting it, and it has to come when we are NOT expecting it. Once I told her that if she could just convince everyone that this was true, then it couldn't happen in 1974 or 1976 either, could it?

15 hours ago, AllenSmith said:

Many people were counseled to understand what the Watchtower was actually saying. And IT DIDNÂ’T SAY THE END OF THE WORLD WOULD COME IN 1975!!!! That truth is an ex-witness propaganda excuse of a lie.

This is probably correct. And I'm sure it happened that some were trying to show how the Watchtower was not being specific about Armageddon in 1975, even though we had heard about 4 District Overseers be as specific as Brother Sinutko. (My father would take us to two district assemblies per year because his work on the Sound systems kept him from paying close attention to the content. So we'd take one assembly in the Midwest and then we'd go back to California for two weeks to visit relatives and take in an assembly while we were out there. My California grandparents or circuit-overeer uncle were always sending us copies of the special talks and I think I heard about three other Sinutko-styled talks: similar content, but without his dramatic delivery. Then I remember the circuit overseers would give at least one talk per visit from about 1968 to 1971 that emphasized that there could have been very little time between Adam's and Eve's creation, just months or even weeks. I believe it was 1969 when the circuit assembly talk on 'the time left is reduced' included a big chart of the the number of months left between 1969 and October 1975. That same idea was used at another assembly. My father had a talk at an assembly in 1970 where he let slip a reminder that none of us should get so excited that we stop taking care of our teeth, for example, because "no one knows the day or the hour." He added the scripture from Matthew 24:36. The District Overseer was angry and met with my father and the circuit overseer telling my father  that this was not the spirit of the talk, which was to encourage excitement. The District Overseer read him the Watchtower from two years prior:

*** w68 8/15 pp. 500-501 par. 35 Why Are You Looking Forward to 1975? ***

• One thing is absolutely certain, Bible chronology reinforced with fulfilled Bible prophecy shows that six thousand years of manÂ’s existence will soon be up, yes, within this generation! (Matt. 24:34) This is, therefore, no time to be indifferent and complacent. This is not the time to be toying with the words of Jesus that “concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matt. 24:36) To the contrary, it is a time when one should be keenly aware that the end of this system of things is rapidly coming to its violent end.

My father got counseled for "toying" with the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:36 by adding them to an assembly talk. And he was not assigned another circuit assembly part for 3 years.

I also saw my father counsel another elder who worked for him, and who had seemingly gone overboard and had begun embarrassing him (and all other Witnesses for that matter) by starting to preach to others who came into my father's office and one of the labs my father ran at the University of Missouri. He was preaching 1975 explicitly. This brother and his wife had been Gilead missionaries back home from Ecuador when they were expecting their first baby.  My father gave him a part time job in the afternoons, and I also came back after a day of pioneering at 3:00 to work (aka "play") in the electronics labs for a couple hours. I remember this was the first work day in January 1975 and he was announcing to people that this was the year for Armageddon. This was the first time I heard a brother (fellow elder) talk to my father using argumentation from the actual wording of Watchtower publications that he was convinced were saying something more than conjecture. It was just that the Watchtower, for some reason, didn't want to word it so explicitly that it would sound like a prophecy. It was left for us to notice the clues, he thought. I can't remember any of the exact examples this elder had used. But it was clear that his general position was that it was the more astute brothers who were seeing it, and it was a serious thing to take notice, and that only the weaker, less spiritually mature Witnesses were downplaying the idea.

I disagreed and took my father's side on this. I remember only shrugging, having nothing to say when the brother looked over to me for some agreement. It was as if he was sure his argument was winning, and he was saying to me "I'm right! Right? You can see it. Right?"  I don't remember my father even looking at me, or talking about it with him. Now I wonder if he thought he had been counseled for actually missing something, but he held his ground through the rest of the year. I remember my brother and my mother would also discuss it because my brother had started a business in 1974 which was doing very well, and I went to work for him for a year before going to Bethel. My father would always encourage the business, and my mother was afraid that starting a business, especially a successful one, was a scary thing that would make him forget about 1975. My brother sold his business 3 years later and got to Bethel after me, even though 2 years older.

But my mother was not caught up in any hysteria either. As I said, I don't remember any "Armageddon Ernie" types. I don't even think anyone was really speculating in any negative sense. It's just that there were two ways to read the statements in the Watchtower from about 1966 to 1973. By 1974, the Watchtower was clearly downplaying the earlier rhetoric, so looking back I'd say the highest level of "speculation" was the idea that this "downplaying" was only for the outside public, but that we, on the inside, were supposed to continue "knowing" secretly that the earlier statements were still in effect. Of course, none of this means that the Watchtower ever predicted 1975 for Armageddon. The prediction, except for a few circuit and district overseer statements, were not about 1975, per se, but about the fact that the system could not go on more than a few months or years beyond 1975. It wasn't about what 1975 would bring, but: What will the 1970's bring?:

 

[Evacuated]

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

The prediction, except for a few circuit and district overseer statements, were not about 1975

This just about caps it for me.

I came into the "truth" by a similar route although a little later than JWI, Truth Book, Things in Which It Is Impossible, Life Everlasting, Lamp book. In that whole time, nothing significant was stated to me about 1975 at all, other than (what I felt at the time was) incomprehensible mutterings about the end of 6000 years since Adam's creation. The few 1975 encounters I did have came a bit later, more 1973-4.  I remember the "Later than You Think" headline from a 1968 Awake that some used to still carry around on the ministry in later years.

The cultural angle seems even more significant after reading these recent postings. I need to be persuaded now that 1975ism wasn't predominantly an "American" thing as my experience of the matter, apart from one already mentioned brother, as a topic of talk or conversational  significance, was minimal.

[TrueTomHarley]

22 hours ago, JW Insider said:

This type of ramping up of the rhetoric was common. There are several more examples.

Might there have been collusion with the Russians?

[JW Insider]

12 hours ago, Gone Fishing said:

I remember the "Later than You Think" headline from a 1968 Awake that some used to still carry around on the ministry in later years.

The cultural angle seems even more significant after reading these recent postings.

Yikes! I just recalled that same phenomenon myself. I also knew a pioneer and a special pioneer who carried around that same Awake! magazine for years -- as late as 1973 and 1974 while I was pioneering with them.

While in the Art Department at Brooklyn Bethel, I learned that the artist who drew this cover had died a few years before but that he was remembered for his ability to create these special headline fonts with no help from stat cameras or photographic effects. He also had done the famous piece of graphic art for the Truth book completely by hand. I saw the drawer over at the Photoplate building in the 8th floor of Factory 1 where this brother ended up doing the same chart in 30 languages, also by hand. No one else could execute the fonts as he could.

An early copy of his Awake! cover was there, too. The Awake! cover "Is It Later Than You Think?" had been called the Hitchcock cover. I remember this because it was a Sister Hickock, I think, (the married couple Randy and Maureen both worked in Photoplate) who mentioned it. The  hypnotic, hallucinogenic style was probably supposed to conjure up the idea of a spiritist trying to look into the future. The Hitchcock reference must have come from the color scheme and ideas from posters like:

 

 

 

[JW Insider]

For some reason the images are lying on top of one another and are covering up the "Edit" button. But here are a few more, in case the idea wasn't clear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TrueTomHarley]

A psychedelic trip for JWs. Heavy, man.

[Anna]

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

A psychedelic trip for JWs. Heavy, man.

It seems that whole period was a psychedelic trip of sorts for some JWS!

Nice to have you back. I thought the cat (out of the bag) had got your tongue

[Anna]

11 hours ago, AllenSmith25 said:

when we don't heed the counsel of not speculating

Wasn't this a bit of; "do as I say but not as I do" ?

[TrueTomHarley]

32 minutes ago, Anna said:

Nice to have you back. I thought the cat (out of the bag) had got your tongue

When you annoy Top Cat O'Malihan (the old hen) it is time to take a breather. After all, it is what I have said to others: 'If you can't abide by the rules, leave.'

However, I am freshly chastened and from now on will do nothing but breathe joy and love to everyone - relatively speaking and with minor caveats.

[Anna]

1 hour ago, Anna said:

12 hours ago, AllenSmith25 said:

when we don't heed the counsel of not speculating

Wasn't this a bit of; "do as I say but not as I do" ?

@DefenderOTT you seem to be confused, sorry for not explaining it properly. What I meant was that by their own admission, the FDS had been speculating, but they counseled everyone else not to.