Posted by AF [AF] on November 12, 1999 at 11:04:11 {CkRQXOxAaIDjRmAxB/kMdaOt1gg/Zk}:
In Reply to: ***Re: Schroeder posted by Farkel on November 12, 1999 at 09:53:00:
You're absolutely right about this, Farkel. They feel that they're above having to answer questions. This attitude became much stronger after the "house-cleaning" in Bethel in 1980.
The Society obviously also feels that it does not have to respect what is true whenever truth is opposed to the Society's policy of the moment. Of course, "policy" has always been largely the personal opinion of whoever held the most power at Watchtower headquarters.
Around 1972 I wrote a letter to the Society detailing my reasons for being confused about and uncomfortable with the basis for the 1975 expectations. The Bible said nothing about an even 7,000 year figure being important, so it was obvious to me that the Society had simply decided that an even number was important. In their response they agreed. I expected that this "new" information would find its way into a Watchtower article and that things would be made clearer about 1975, but that never happened.
The other day I was talking to a man who had been heavily involved with WTS leaders, including Fred Franz and Nathan Knorr, back then. He explained why the Society was not interested in acting on the facts I told them about. It seems that in the mid-to-late 1960s the rate of publisher increase was not high, and so when Franz's announcement in 1966 of an updated chronology, which included some leading statements about 1975, created some excitement in the JW community about the possibility of "the end" in 1975, Franz saw it as an opportunity to obtain larger increases in publishers. So he wrote more articles that fanned the flames of enthusiasm, and then most of the rest of the JW leadership went along because of the obvious value of creating such excitement. So when someone like me pointed out inconvenient facts, these were bound to be ignored.
AF