Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: wcsa@iwsgw.att.com (Willard Smith) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Questions for Jehovah's Witnesses, part 2 Message-ID: Date: 13 Nov 90 08:55:35 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Indian Hill West - Naperville, IL Lines: 60 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu I think that we have to be a little bit careful in dealing with the significance of 1975 to Jehovah Witnesses. Between 1973 and 1975 I served as a Mormon missionary in England. The Jehovah Witnesses were extremely active proselyters in England, and people often mistook us as Jehovah Witnesses. Since I had never met a Jehovah Witness before in my life, I decided to collect and read as much of their literature as I could. I would get two messages concerning the year 1975. One, from people who had been proselyted by Jehovah Witnesses, would state that 1975 was suppose to mark the end of the world or the second coming of Christ or something equally cataclysmic. When I would ask Jehovah Witnesses about the significance of 1975, they wouldn't tell me. They would get non- committal, or they would say something like, "You'll find out" in a tone reminiscent of Bill Cosby's "How long can you tred water?" I looked everywhere in their literature for something that pinned down 1975 and found nothing. I remember in particular one family who had been studying with the Jehovah Witnesses for approximately a year and had some pretty neat study materials that I had never seen before. They told me that 1975 was suppose to mark the end of the world and the beginning of the 1000 years of peace. The father told me that there was a printed reference to 1975 in one of his study books and for an hour tried to find it but never did. When 1975 began, there was a surge in Jehovah Witness proselyting activity in the Eastern midlands of England (where I was working as Zone Leader). Lots of people remarked on it. Usually Jehovah Witnesses would work an area and then leave it alone for about six months, but January thru March 1975 they would go through the same area two or three times in a single month. We assumed that they would get an entire congregation working several nights a week. Other Mormon missionaries throughout the Midlands and North Wales told me the same thing, 1975 held some kind of major significance for Jehovah Witnesses. Everyone would repeat the same "End of the World" story, but I never actually heard a Jehovah Witness say that and I never read it in any of their literature. After returning to the "states" in mid-1975, I had occasion to remark on this phenomenon with a couple of friends who had served missions in France and Italy. Both of them told me that they had observed the same behavior and had heard the same story. The friend who had been in France told me that a Jehovah Witness had actually told him that the world was going to end in 1975. I honestly don't know the significance of 1975 for Jehovah Witnesses, they wouldn't tell me. I do know that it was not a local phenomenon, having occurred throughout England, France, and Italy. I frankly don't know what was going on in the "states" at the time except for Watergate. Gene Gross's reprint of articles from _Watchtower_ and _Kingdom Ministry_ are interesting, but still inconclusive. After all this time, I would like to know (either from a Jehovah Witness who was around in 1975 or from their literature, preferably both) the significance of 1975 and an explaination for the behavior which I observed. -- Willard C. Smith att!cbnewsc!iwsgw!wcsa wcsa@iwsgw.att.com "It's life, Captain, but not as we know it."