JW Insider

This might often be true. But more often it brings a polite "no thank you" from those who don't want to listen. The proportion of countries where there is outright persecution and banning of our work has actually improved. In most countries of the world the reaction to our message is non-violent, even peaceful. And sometimes, it is obviously still quite enthusiastically positive. The 8.6 million plus publishers in 2019 conducted 9.6 million Bible Studies, and 300,000 new ones were baptized. That's nearly a third of a million new persons. And shows that on average there was more than one Bible Study conducted per publisher.
Of course, you picked the numbers from 2020 which dropped from 2019. @Witness already pointed out that they actually dropped .6% (which is based on the average monthly publishers, not just the "peak" which you quoted above). But the bigger drop from 2019 to 2020 was the number of Bible Studies which dropped 20%.
2019: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 9,618,182 2020: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 7,705,765 They dropped by nearly TWO MILLION in one year! (Partly because we were asked not to keep studying with persons if there was no apparent progress.) But notice that they weren't replaced by new studies, so that the average is now much less than one Bible Study per publisher.
Also note the number of new ones baptized also dropped by 20%:
2019: Total Number Baptized *: 303,866 2020: Total Number Baptized *: 241,994 And unfortunately, this also means that over 300,000 persons left the Witnesses between 2019 and 2020 for there to still be a decrease even though so many were baptized. Some leave by death or disfellowshipping, but the vast majority of these 300,000 must have decided to leave.
And the 2021 numbers are already in, and the Society was not able to report an increase in publishers this year, except in a few individual branches.
This also means that there is no need for additional congregations, so I'm guessing that the number will continue to remain about the same, or more likely decrease. I wouldn't look for a 20% increase in congregations to 144,000 even though you think that number of congregations is somehow significant. Anecdotally, I already heard about a couple special language congregations (New York and Los Angeles) that are being dropped and reverting to their original congregations.
You are telling people that this system will go on for another 20 years, which is very unfaithful and indiscreet in light of Jesus' warning that the end could come at any time, as if without warning, like a thief in the night.
The response appears to be diminishing, but wasn't your original point about how violent and hostile we can expect the response to be?
There is nothing about this in the Bible. Paul wasn't speaking of an outbreak resulting in a proclamation, he was just agreeing with 2 Peter 3:3 that there have been ridiculers since the first century saying they don't believe this parousia is coming because they can still talk about the relative peace and security that allows them to eat, drink, get married, etc. Adding to the Bible that we should wait for a proclamation by political kings shows a lack of discretion and a lack of discernment. Remember that Jesus, too, spoke of the time coming as a time of relative peace and security when he compared it to a time when you might be asleep in your house, or working in a field, or grinding at a mill, or doing any of the things that people were doing in Noah's day or in Sodom when the end came, essentially without warning.
Just like Jesus, both Paul and Peter added that it would come "as a thief in the night." This way, no one would get the impression that we should look for some "proclamation by political kings" of peace and security. (Nor wait for some specific proclamation by ridiculers that "things are going on [peacefully and securely] just as from creation's beginning.")
For the same reason, there can be no specific time when any of us (GB included) can declare in advance that it is now time for a "final message of divine destruction." That would only show a level of presumptuousness and indiscretion. It would make us wise in our own eyes, and completely unfaithful to Jesus' words that "no one knows the day or the hour" because "it will come as a thief in the night."
Ah! Something we can agree on! 😊

The Bible has to be read in context.
Otherwise the Scripture about “… after I leave, wolves will enter in among the flock” becomes rationale for dogs going to heaven.
etc., ad nauseum.

I never said Russia wasn't totalitarian. But I will say that totalitarianism has often been exaggerated for geopolitical purposes. But I have seen enough Hollywood movies to know that Russia is evil. (Actually, one of my best worldly friends from work came from Russia after '95 and has a sister-in-law who won an Oscar, also Russian for best costume design and now I notice the name in the credits of several historical movies. I worked with this Russian from 1995 to 2012 and we even ate at their house a couple of times. He was a physician and she was a math PhD. We got an excellent historical review of Russian history from a St Petersburg family who lived it personally. It was useful to learn about a range of issues, both good and bad, from someone who mostly hated living there, but understood the politics and the trouble with "intellectuals" who were too reluctant to show support for the party.
Both countries (Russia and China) have problems with human rights for many of their own people. For comparison, the USA  appears to be much, much worse on human rights against persons in other countries, however. The USA pushes for starvation, war, and civil war to keep many countries weak. When the US promotes a coup and leaves the country in chaos (Libya, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela, etc.) it isn't a failure, it is a success in creating the chaos an weakness intended. When the US promotes economic sanctions against a country it is really for the purpose of creating, not only dissatisfaction, but actual starvation. And where "aid" is offered, it is often only offered with military and imperialist motivations. Almost anything one hears about China's supposed military bases, especially in Africa, turn out to be non-military ports infrastructure beneficial to both countries. When the West does it, it's always asymmetrical. The same is true of the loans for infrastucture from the World Bank and the IMF. Yet all that guilt from the West is projected on China because China also loans money to many countries.
Basically the only remaining countries with a death penalty are the USA, China, and some Middle Eastern and majority-Muslim countries. I believe that China thought it was OK to donate the organs of executed prisoners until just a few decades ago. I don't know if this has completely stopped, but I see that even those "China experts" who still believe it goes on admit that they haven't seen any evidence of it for several decades. Yet, I still see it debated in American academic journals for promoting the practice in the USA. (It's been illegal in the US, to accept even voluntary donations from death-row prisoners since 2013.)
I was only sharing something I was reading about a tech company that wanted to set up facial recognition to solve some crime problems in China. I read that it was abandoned. Not that it won't come back, perhaps on a larger scale. But, so far, I think more global companies and governments are salivating for this in the West.
I understand from sites like this: https://sipri.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/fs_2104_milex_0.pdf that China has nearly 5 times the number of people that the USA has, and yet spends only a third of what the USA spends on military. That means that the US spends about 15 times as much as China, per person. And with a GDP of about 15 trillion, they spend about 252 billion on military. About 1/60th. The US GDP is about 21 trillion, and the US spends about 750 billion on military, or 2/60 -- twice as much. And the amount China spends on surveillance is much, much less than the USA.
China is not imperialist, as the US is, and does not need the control over other countries that the US apparently feels it needs. The US has bombed the following countries since WWII: (according to the site: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/heres-a-list-of-all-the-countries-the-us-has-bombed-since-world-war-ii-172786/
China 1945-46 Korea 1950-53 China 1950-53 Guatemala 1954 Indonesia 1958 Cuba 1959-60 Guatemala 1960 Belgian Congo 1964 Guatemala 1964 Dominican Republic 1965-66 Peru 1965 Laos 1964-73 Vietnam 1961-73 Cambodia 1969-70 Guatemala 1967-69 Lebanon 1982-84 Grenada 1983-84 Libya 1986 El Salvador 1981-92 Nicaragua 1981-90 Iran 1987-88 Libya 1989 Panama 1989-90 Iraq 1991 Kuwait 1991 Somalia 1992-94 Bosnia 1995 Iran 1998 Sudan 1998 Afghanistan 1998 Yugoslavia – Serbia 1999 Afghanistan 2001 Libya 2011 Iraq and Syria 2014 – Somalia 2011 – Iran 2020 – Compare that to the number of countries that China has bombed or invaded since WWII.
So if you are using military expenditure to identify totalitarian countries, China doesn't compare all that well. And of course, these numbers use a very conservative method of counting military expenditure. There is also the amount of military equipment sold to police departments, the weapons sold to Saudi Arabia to help them bomb Yemen. Undocumented "aid" to dozens of countries to help them build up borders against countries the USA doesn't like. And foreign aid with strings attached to allow the US to build military bases.
Anything is possible. But why do you always sound so sure that things are so much worse there than they are in say, the United States, for example? Are you sure there have not been many more persons silenced in the USA, even though the US population is so much smaller?
Agreed. And I agree with the issues respecting the misuse of philanthropy, etc.
You are wrong there. I think you get that idea because I don't believe in all these end-time scenarios that you often predict are really necessary.
Anything is possible in an unpredictable and chaotic world, but I think it's dangerous to start concerning ourselves with various scenarios that are expected to happen in the next few years. There is no guarantee this system will last that long. It gets back to the old problem of "looking for a sign." I think about why Jesus said that a wicked generation keeps looking for a sign. When Jesus' disciples asked for a sign the first thing Jesus said is not to be misled by wars, reports of wars, earthquakes, pestilences, famines, etc., because those things can take place at any time, and aren't necessarily tied to the "end." The real thing comes as a thief, as if without warning. Not that this applies to you personally, of course, but there is always a danger of other persons becoming complacent when they think the end can't happen yet because a certain expectation hasn't happened yet.

I agree, of course, that China is not a utopia.
People often claim that China was the testing ground for new policies like "social credit scores." This wasn't true. There were some businesses that wanted to try something related to this, and there were a couple of cities that tried and abandoned it. It had already been tried in many ways and in much deeper fashion in the West through Internet tracking data, continued bank redlining, housing policies, credit card expenditure tracking, private prison policies, credit score abuses, arresting and harrasment of leftist and environmental activists, facial recognition tracking, the "New Jim Crow," "canceling" of social media accounts of those who try to discredit mainstream media, etc.
It's true that China has had some specific problems not so well known in the West, such as people rushing onto trains at the last second to try for a free ride. (Like NYC turnstile-jumping but onto more expensive, long-distance trains.) Facial recognition was supposedly going to make it easier to catch and punish this crime. At any rate, even when most of these tests were short-lived and abandoned, there seemed to be a new policy in the West to exaggerate them. They made it look as if they not only started in China, but had become ubiquitous there. Thousands of memes and videos about Chinese social credit scores were spread with made-up claims.
In my opinion, China is not totalitarian. There are those who would like us to think so because that would provide Western policy maker with a comparison so that anything can be attempted with the claim that 'at least it's not as bad as it is in China." In fact, vaccinations in China are still voluntary, in spite of false claims that they are being forced in the way that many Western nations have threatened to do.
China has tried some stupid policies. So has the West. China is still a fairly backward and relatively poor country. But the average person is doing better in terms of services, education, health, housing, etc., and the poorest have all been pulled out of poverty levels. Communist policies are loved by the majority but are probably "painful" to those who now have less in order to help pay for the "rising tide" that helps the majority. But the majority love their government because they feel represented by them. In the West, a small minority of millionaires and billionaires will fight tooth and nail politically to avoid having their taxes go back to the levels in the time of Eisenhower and even Kennedy. And their tax breaks take away from the services that would otherwise be available to the poor in the US for example, who therefore feel they are not democratically represented. Lifespans among the poor in the US were already decreasing well before Covid-19.

Consider the source, though. This is the Epoch Times, a newspaper run by a cult that was banned for its violence in China. This included hundreds if not thousands of knife attacks in China. Even murders. Because they declare themselves to be so vehemently anti-communist they find that they can get US and Western funding for their media projects which are guaranteed to intersperse ridiculously false claims against the CCP.
In every major "state of the union" speech, the CCP leadership always emphasizes and celebrates the number of different ethnic groups and cultures found in China. They also regularly publicly declare against the tendency of the Han Chinese majority to act superior or prejudiced against minority populations. Muslim customs and culture are celebrated, and the use of their own local language is promoted in areas where those local languages are used. (I was surprised to learn that Mongolian has been dying out among Mongolians outside of China, yet Mongolians in China are encouraged to use and learn their customs and language, and you can see this in the bilingual signs in Chinese Mongolian neighborhoods and schools.) The same is true among Uyghur populations as you can see from the bilingual signs the Chinese government provides in their neighborhoods. The CCP has been supportive of Muslim populations all over China, supporting the building of mosques, etc. Muslim populations have grown in China because China never imposed the one-child policy on ethnic minorities. The Uyghur population itself has grown in spite of false claims of genocide. Their language and culture is supported in spite of claims.
Of course, many Uyghurs are terrorists and nationalist/separatists who have killed persons in attacks in China and thousands have also crossed the border to fight alongside Al Qaeda in Syria and other places in the Middle East. So it's true that many have been put in prison, and the Chinese prison system apparently forced radicalized Muslims to get "re-education" propaganda to "appreciate" the Chinese government, along with the usual job training and rehabilitation training that Chinese prisons are known for.
I have a feeling that the United States loves it when various bandwagon activist groups promote the claims of Falun Gong, Adrien Zenz, and ex-patriate families of Uyghur separatists/terrorists. This is because it deflects from western civil rights abuses, and the fact that the USA has continued to promote the killing of millions of Muslims through sanctions and war in Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc. 
Also, just a few years ago, the US had a 70% positive view of China, which has now quickly dropped to 30% with a very high percentage of Americans feeling we should actually invade China. The regular anti-China news stories are often comical. Often they are debunked within days, but repeated again so often that the majority of Western audiences will not realize it.
Here are just a couple of examples:
The NYT just ran a repeat of the debunked story of a Chinese tennis star who never claimed she was sexually assaulted, but the story repeated that phrase several times. The most recent version of the NYT story even printed the original post from the tennis player in Chinese, but naturally, the NYT wouldn't include a translation, which would have ruined the claims of the NYT story. The story also made claims that those who continued to support her had numbers in their social media names and are therefore "bot-like" without admitting that this is also common in the United States (jw-tj-1914, john316, tess04211967) but that it is even more common in China because the "tone" of certain number combinations when spoken aloud actually produce an echo of common phrases in Chinese. Even stupider was the claim that she shows a picture of herself with stuffed toy animals,. implying that she must be trying to prove she is OK when she isn't. That just shows how uninformed the writer was about the popularity of stuffed toy animals in China, or it shows how uninformed the writer hopes the readers of the article will be. I understand that CNN just recently ran another interview with one of the infamous Uyghur women who has made claims about harsh conditions in a Chinese "concentration camp." In the interview she claimed that they took away and replaced her passport so that she couldn't leave the country. CNN even printed a picture of the passport as if it was some kind of evidence. But someone noticed (and reported elsewhere) that the passport proved she was lying because the dates on it showed it was still valid during the time she claimed to be imprisoned and made the claims that she couldn't travel. So what did CNN do? They didn't correct the story, or remove that part of the interview, or remove the picture of the passport. Instead, CNN decided only to black out the dates on the passport, but keep the picture.  The 60 Minutes TV program aired last week with another anti-China story, as they seem to do every other week or so. It was mostly about how Xi is scaring the West by cracking down on excessive capitalism and capitalists. This last one tried to appear more balanced by offering nearly equal time to a Chinese spokeswoman who gave reasons and evidence for why this was a reasonable approach to the excesses and abuses. But their "equal time" was balanced by an expert whose basic tactic was not to give any evidence but just ended up with: "Well, they can say what they want, but can you really trust them?" In other words, just an appeal to prejudice rather than worrying about facts and evidence.

Whether it makes sense or not, there's a huge story there, and a lot of the evidence comes from many sources that might seem surprising. It's not really an exception to the idea that communism must still be sabotaged wherever possible. In this case the sabotage was drunken capitalism. And, of course, the form of government is less important to the US and Western allies than the idea of keeping all other other economies too weak. If it still seems like an exception to the rule, there is a lot to say here, but I'll save it for later.
The US also destroyed the Japanese capitalist economy, beginning in the 1980's, with specific trade policies. For now, I'll also just leave this topic for later. This doesn't mean that the US doesn't want shining examples of democracy producing strong economies. It's just that certain types of direct competition couldn't be allowed under particular historical circumstances.
It's almost too easy to see it with Central and South America. Coups, assassination attempts, kidnappings, riots, sanctions, embargoes, sabotage, US backed terrorism, training small armies in bordering countries. There is also the constant drone of reporting only on dissatisfaction, and twisting facts everywhere. Yesterday morning I listenedd to BBC news on NPR:
the big anti-China story of the week, that you mentioned earlier (where I suspect the tennis player just knew she'd need and want some privacy after the bombshell). a story about how the leftist parties of Chile will have to run off in the next election against a growing faction that will even admit openly to wanting another Pinochet a story about how a precinct in Venezuela finally voted in a right wing opposition party candidate The BBC topics the week before included daily mentions of protests in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, supposedly sham elections in Central America, etc.
A major point of all this news, especially the last couple of 60 Minutes that I watched, was to make sure that the US audience does NOT see any leftist/socialist government as "democratically" elected. The NYT even ran a piece decrying the fact that the Chinese people overwhelmingly "elect" to have a communist government because it does so much for them. It was almost like: "Why can't the people in China see how terrible their government is, the way we see it?" This popularity of communist governments with the people is, of course, why Chinese people (and their government) can claim to have a democratically "selected" government. They would say it is more representative of their interests than the US version of elected, but unrepresentative, democracy.
Hey! I saw that!! 😉
There's a historical and current reason for this. It goes for Cambodia and Laos, too. There actually has been a bit of fomenting again about Vietnam, but not at all to the point of "demonizing" them. I've heard the rumors here that US State Dept folks have expected Vietnamese communism to fall during a couple of previous US presidencies. But now it's actually looking more entrenched. A particular mode of government (like communism) doesn't have to look quite as good as shiny capitalism to still be better than what they had recently gone through.
Also, this ties back to the most viable method to weaken a superpower. In this case the superpower is China, and every method is used to try to foment unrest related to China (Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, Inner Mongolia). If nationalist breakaway parties can be formed it could take a powerful country and break it into weaker pieces.
In this case Vietnam was thought to be a part of that equation. The arguments over who can fish how far out from their own borders in the South China Sea have probably gone on for over a thousand years. Japan hates China and the US has considered allowing them to arm their own military which would serve US purposes in case of a skirmish over this. (And the US floods Taiwan with military equipment for the similar reasons.) Vietnam and the Philippines have the same issue with China Sea fishing too, and Vietnam has had a negative history with China since Mao. (Mao stupidly funded and helped militarize variously chosen "sides" all over the place, including the muhajideen in Afghanistan, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge communism. And it did much damage to Viet Nam especially when Sino-Russian relations broke down.
I've heard that the US loves it that the China Sea conflict is ongoing and has encouraged the Philippines to stand up to China. The US keeps a fleet there too in case any provocation can start and escalate. The US was supposedly really miffed that Duterte was elected again after saying he won't stand up to China militarily, but will just do his best to get along. If Vietnam would at least stand up with a voice against China, then the US could amplify that voice. And demonizing Vietnam would keep it from falling into trade partnership with the US if a split over communism develops. China is taking advantage by building rails and transportation in Laos, and plans to further help Cambodia and VietNam too.
The TPP and Pivot to Asia initiatives were set to help break the economic growth of China by favorable trade partnerships with countries all around that would exclude China. I think Trump either didn't realize that this was the purpose, or he knew that a lot of constituents didn't realize it, and therefore thought best politically to discard it as just an Obama/Hillary thing. But it would have had a more "successfully" negative effect on China's economy than the trade wars he initiated. China ended up winning the trade wars, and this caused a lot of farmers to change their minds about Trump while he was still in office.
Suicide is nothing to squid kid about so I had to scratch my comment about so many also dying from deadly games of red light, green light, etc.
At least I can laugh at anthro[po]morphic coal. But I wouldn't want to "lignite" any hard feelings under the surface. I didn't think you'd "mine."
You might have meant "anthracite," but here's my anthropomorphic coal joke:
Q. Peat and Re-Peat were in a bog. Peat fell out. Who was left?
A. Re-Peat.
Q. Peat and Re-Peat were in a bog. Peat fell out. Who was left?
A. Re-Peat.
etc, etc, etc

I was not trying to clarify a time structure. I was only showing to what extent we will begin making assumptions based on our own assumptions. And if it means adding or taking away from the Bible, or even promoting a contradiction to the Bible, we often won't realize just how easily and quickly we are ready to do this.
That's a good example. Notice how the Bible doesn't say anything about Adam and Eve having canine teeth, and yet we can be so quick to make an assumption that has no Biblical evidence, one way or another. If animal teeth can be explained by what kind of vegetation those animals were consuming, then why couldn't Adam have canine teeth which could be explained by what kind of vegetation he would be consuming? You seem to be saying that Adam had no canine teeth at first, but Cain, Seth, Abel, and Cain's wife were born with canine teeth. And then Adam and Eve grew them after they were expelled. But there are no scriptures supporting this assumption.

Allowing the animals to eat other animals after they died is supposedly a clever solution to the idea that Jehovah would never have created carnivores. But it's only an explanation that might otherwise explain carnivorous teeth and claws and carnivorous digestive systems, and carnivorous hunting instincts. Otherwise we would have to explain how and why such teeth and claws and carnivorous digestive systems and carnivorous hunting instincts evolved so quickly from the time of Noah.
But even though the solution is clever it shows that the person who made up the solution didn't believe the Bible the way they thought they believed it. (I know it wasn't you who made up the solution, I've seen it in several fundamentalist sources.)
The Bible is clear enough that the overall intention of Creation was initially for humans to be vegetarian and for animals to be be vegetarian:
(Genesis 1:29, 30) . . .Then God said: “Here I have given to you every seed-bearing plant that is on the entire earth and every tree with seed-bearing fruit. Let them serve as food for you. 30 And to every wild animal of the earth and to every flying creature of the heavens and to everything moving on the earth in which there is life, I have given all green vegetation for food.” And it was so.
Technically, of course, this could mean that all animals would eat vegetation even if they also ate meat, so that all animals were either vegetarian or omnivores, and would therefore be competing with man for the vegetation. 
But trying to use the scripture in Genesis to prove that there were no carnivores falls short of explaining the carnivorous features and instincts of some animals. Merely claiming that they ate dead meat still contradicts the very idea they are trying to make use of from the Bible. Any animals eating dead meat are still eating meat, and not following the supposed "rule" of Genesis 1:30. And if you allow for animals to eat dead meat that died on its own, then why not allow maggots to eat of the same carcasses? What are they doing that is so different from what the larger animals are doing?
If a person is going to "go against" the Bible to claim that large animals could eat dead meat, then why not also allow them to be carnivores? The Genesis account never says there were no carnivores anyway. It just says that all the animals were also given vegetation to eat just like humans were given vegetation to eat. 
If one were take this to the absurd degree and not even allow for maggots and decay, then they aren't allowing Adam to have microbes in his intestines. They aren't allowing birds to eat spiders, or even to eat insects like mosquitoes. They aren't allowing for mosquitoes either, unless they believe mosquitoes evolved a new digestive process, and they are claiming that spiders evolved a complex "instinct" to create complex webs and capture flies. And some plants like "Venus fly-traps" evolved complex "instincts" to respond to captured flies and spiders, too. And all of this evolution, including spider webs, etc., would have to happened in the last 4,000 years???? 
I wonder how the human digestive system would work with chemical reactions and enzymes only, without any microscopic organisms to help the process.
Reminds me of a poem "Antiquity of the Microbe" supposedly the shortest poem ever, attributed to Ogden Nash or Strickland Gillilan:
Adam
had'm.
Ogden Nash and also Augustus De Morgan are both associated with another poem that has a bearing on the topic:
Great fleas have little fleas
Upon their backs to bite ‘em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
And so ad infinitum
And the great fleas themselves, in turn,
Have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still,
And greater still, and so on.

Not babies, per se. Only when they are becoming "publishers." But it is true that this is where most of the newly baptized ones come from.

This might often be true. But more often it brings a polite "no thank you" from those who don't want to listen. The proportion of countries where there is outright persecution and banning of our work has actually improved. In most countries of the world the reaction to our message is non-violent, even peaceful. And sometimes, it is obviously still quite enthusiastically positive. The 8.6 million plus publishers in 2019 conducted 9.6 million Bible Studies, and 300,000 new ones were baptized. That's nearly a third of a million new persons. And shows that on average there was more than one Bible Study conducted per publisher.
Of course, you picked the numbers from 2020 which dropped from 2019. @Witness already pointed out that they actually dropped .6% (which is based on the average monthly publishers, not just the "peak" which you quoted above). But the bigger drop from 2019 to 2020 was the number of Bible Studies which dropped 20%.
2019: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 9,618,182 2020: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 7,705,765 They dropped by nearly TWO MILLION in one year! (Partly because we were asked not to keep studying with persons if there was no apparent progress.) But notice that they weren't replaced by new studies, so that the average is now much less than one Bible Study per publisher.
Also note the number of new ones baptized also dropped by 20%:
2019: Total Number Baptized *: 303,866 2020: Total Number Baptized *: 241,994 And unfortunately, this also means that over 300,000 persons left the Witnesses between 2019 and 2020 for there to still be a decrease even though so many were baptized. Some leave by death or disfellowshipping, but the vast majority of these 300,000 must have decided to leave.
And the 2021 numbers are already in, and the Society was not able to report an increase in publishers this year, except in a few individual branches.
This also means that there is no need for additional congregations, so I'm guessing that the number will continue to remain about the same, or more likely decrease. I wouldn't look for a 20% increase in congregations to 144,000 even though you think that number of congregations is somehow significant. Anecdotally, I already heard about a couple special language congregations (New York and Los Angeles) that are being dropped and reverting to their original congregations.
You are telling people that this system will go on for another 20 years, which is very unfaithful and indiscreet in light of Jesus' warning that the end could come at any time, as if without warning, like a thief in the night.
The response appears to be diminishing, but wasn't your original point about how violent and hostile we can expect the response to be?
There is nothing about this in the Bible. Paul wasn't speaking of an outbreak resulting in a proclamation, he was just agreeing with 2 Peter 3:3 that there have been ridiculers since the first century saying they don't believe this parousia is coming because they can still talk about the relative peace and security that allows them to eat, drink, get married, etc. Adding to the Bible that we should wait for a proclamation by political kings shows a lack of discretion and a lack of discernment. Remember that Jesus, too, spoke of the time coming as a time of relative peace and security when he compared it to a time when you might be asleep in your house, or working in a field, or grinding at a mill, or doing any of the things that people were doing in Noah's day or in Sodom when the end came, essentially without warning.
Just like Jesus, both Paul and Peter added that it would come "as a thief in the night." This way, no one would get the impression that we should look for some "proclamation by political kings" of peace and security. (Nor wait for some specific proclamation by ridiculers that "things are going on [peacefully and securely] just as from creation's beginning.")
For the same reason, there can be no specific time when any of us (GB included) can declare in advance that it is now time for a "final message of divine destruction." That would only show a level of presumptuousness and indiscretion. It would make us wise in our own eyes, and completely unfaithful to Jesus' words that "no one knows the day or the hour" because "it will come as a thief in the night."
Ah! Something we can agree on! 😊

This might often be true. But more often it brings a polite "no thank you" from those who don't want to listen. The proportion of countries where there is outright persecution and banning of our work has actually improved. In most countries of the world the reaction to our message is non-violent, even peaceful. And sometimes, it is obviously still quite enthusiastically positive. The 8.6 million plus publishers in 2019 conducted 9.6 million Bible Studies, and 300,000 new ones were baptized. That's nearly a third of a million new persons. And shows that on average there was more than one Bible Study conducted per publisher.
Of course, you picked the numbers from 2020 which dropped from 2019. @Witness already pointed out that they actually dropped .6% (which is based on the average monthly publishers, not just the "peak" which you quoted above). But the bigger drop from 2019 to 2020 was the number of Bible Studies which dropped 20%.
2019: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 9,618,182 2020: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 7,705,765 They dropped by nearly TWO MILLION in one year! (Partly because we were asked not to keep studying with persons if there was no apparent progress.) But notice that they weren't replaced by new studies, so that the average is now much less than one Bible Study per publisher.
Also note the number of new ones baptized also dropped by 20%:
2019: Total Number Baptized *: 303,866 2020: Total Number Baptized *: 241,994 And unfortunately, this also means that over 300,000 persons left the Witnesses between 2019 and 2020 for there to still be a decrease even though so many were baptized. Some leave by death or disfellowshipping, but the vast majority of these 300,000 must have decided to leave.
And the 2021 numbers are already in, and the Society was not able to report an increase in publishers this year, except in a few individual branches.
This also means that there is no need for additional congregations, so I'm guessing that the number will continue to remain about the same, or more likely decrease. I wouldn't look for a 20% increase in congregations to 144,000 even though you think that number of congregations is somehow significant. Anecdotally, I already heard about a couple special language congregations (New York and Los Angeles) that are being dropped and reverting to their original congregations.
You are telling people that this system will go on for another 20 years, which is very unfaithful and indiscreet in light of Jesus' warning that the end could come at any time, as if without warning, like a thief in the night.
The response appears to be diminishing, but wasn't your original point about how violent and hostile we can expect the response to be?
There is nothing about this in the Bible. Paul wasn't speaking of an outbreak resulting in a proclamation, he was just agreeing with 2 Peter 3:3 that there have been ridiculers since the first century saying they don't believe this parousia is coming because they can still talk about the relative peace and security that allows them to eat, drink, get married, etc. Adding to the Bible that we should wait for a proclamation by political kings shows a lack of discretion and a lack of discernment. Remember that Jesus, too, spoke of the time coming as a time of relative peace and security when he compared it to a time when you might be asleep in your house, or working in a field, or grinding at a mill, or doing any of the things that people were doing in Noah's day or in Sodom when the end came, essentially without warning.
Just like Jesus, both Paul and Peter added that it would come "as a thief in the night." This way, no one would get the impression that we should look for some "proclamation by political kings" of peace and security. (Nor wait for some specific proclamation by ridiculers that "things are going on [peacefully and securely] just as from creation's beginning.")
For the same reason, there can be no specific time when any of us (GB included) can declare in advance that it is now time for a "final message of divine destruction." That would only show a level of presumptuousness and indiscretion. It would make us wise in our own eyes, and completely unfaithful to Jesus' words that "no one knows the day or the hour" because "it will come as a thief in the night."
Ah! Something we can agree on! 😊

This might often be true. But more often it brings a polite "no thank you" from those who don't want to listen. The proportion of countries where there is outright persecution and banning of our work has actually improved. In most countries of the world the reaction to our message is non-violent, even peaceful. And sometimes, it is obviously still quite enthusiastically positive. The 8.6 million plus publishers in 2019 conducted 9.6 million Bible Studies, and 300,000 new ones were baptized. That's nearly a third of a million new persons. And shows that on average there was more than one Bible Study conducted per publisher.
Of course, you picked the numbers from 2020 which dropped from 2019. @Witness already pointed out that they actually dropped .6% (which is based on the average monthly publishers, not just the "peak" which you quoted above). But the bigger drop from 2019 to 2020 was the number of Bible Studies which dropped 20%.
2019: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 9,618,182 2020: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 7,705,765 They dropped by nearly TWO MILLION in one year! (Partly because we were asked not to keep studying with persons if there was no apparent progress.) But notice that they weren't replaced by new studies, so that the average is now much less than one Bible Study per publisher.
Also note the number of new ones baptized also dropped by 20%:
2019: Total Number Baptized *: 303,866 2020: Total Number Baptized *: 241,994 And unfortunately, this also means that over 300,000 persons left the Witnesses between 2019 and 2020 for there to still be a decrease even though so many were baptized. Some leave by death or disfellowshipping, but the vast majority of these 300,000 must have decided to leave.
And the 2021 numbers are already in, and the Society was not able to report an increase in publishers this year, except in a few individual branches.
This also means that there is no need for additional congregations, so I'm guessing that the number will continue to remain about the same, or more likely decrease. I wouldn't look for a 20% increase in congregations to 144,000 even though you think that number of congregations is somehow significant. Anecdotally, I already heard about a couple special language congregations (New York and Los Angeles) that are being dropped and reverting to their original congregations.
You are telling people that this system will go on for another 20 years, which is very unfaithful and indiscreet in light of Jesus' warning that the end could come at any time, as if without warning, like a thief in the night.
The response appears to be diminishing, but wasn't your original point about how violent and hostile we can expect the response to be?
There is nothing about this in the Bible. Paul wasn't speaking of an outbreak resulting in a proclamation, he was just agreeing with 2 Peter 3:3 that there have been ridiculers since the first century saying they don't believe this parousia is coming because they can still talk about the relative peace and security that allows them to eat, drink, get married, etc. Adding to the Bible that we should wait for a proclamation by political kings shows a lack of discretion and a lack of discernment. Remember that Jesus, too, spoke of the time coming as a time of relative peace and security when he compared it to a time when you might be asleep in your house, or working in a field, or grinding at a mill, or doing any of the things that people were doing in Noah's day or in Sodom when the end came, essentially without warning.
Just like Jesus, both Paul and Peter added that it would come "as a thief in the night." This way, no one would get the impression that we should look for some "proclamation by political kings" of peace and security. (Nor wait for some specific proclamation by ridiculers that "things are going on [peacefully and securely] just as from creation's beginning.")
For the same reason, there can be no specific time when any of us (GB included) can declare in advance that it is now time for a "final message of divine destruction." That would only show a level of presumptuousness and indiscretion. It would make us wise in our own eyes, and completely unfaithful to Jesus' words that "no one knows the day or the hour" because "it will come as a thief in the night."
Ah! Something we can agree on! 😊

This might often be true. But more often it brings a polite "no thank you" from those who don't want to listen. The proportion of countries where there is outright persecution and banning of our work has actually improved. In most countries of the world the reaction to our message is non-violent, even peaceful. And sometimes, it is obviously still quite enthusiastically positive. The 8.6 million plus publishers in 2019 conducted 9.6 million Bible Studies, and 300,000 new ones were baptized. That's nearly a third of a million new persons. And shows that on average there was more than one Bible Study conducted per publisher.
Of course, you picked the numbers from 2020 which dropped from 2019. @Witness already pointed out that they actually dropped .6% (which is based on the average monthly publishers, not just the "peak" which you quoted above). But the bigger drop from 2019 to 2020 was the number of Bible Studies which dropped 20%.
2019: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 9,618,182 2020: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 7,705,765 They dropped by nearly TWO MILLION in one year! (Partly because we were asked not to keep studying with persons if there was no apparent progress.) But notice that they weren't replaced by new studies, so that the average is now much less than one Bible Study per publisher.
Also note the number of new ones baptized also dropped by 20%:
2019: Total Number Baptized *: 303,866 2020: Total Number Baptized *: 241,994 And unfortunately, this also means that over 300,000 persons left the Witnesses between 2019 and 2020 for there to still be a decrease even though so many were baptized. Some leave by death or disfellowshipping, but the vast majority of these 300,000 must have decided to leave.
And the 2021 numbers are already in, and the Society was not able to report an increase in publishers this year, except in a few individual branches.
This also means that there is no need for additional congregations, so I'm guessing that the number will continue to remain about the same, or more likely decrease. I wouldn't look for a 20% increase in congregations to 144,000 even though you think that number of congregations is somehow significant. Anecdotally, I already heard about a couple special language congregations (New York and Los Angeles) that are being dropped and reverting to their original congregations.
You are telling people that this system will go on for another 20 years, which is very unfaithful and indiscreet in light of Jesus' warning that the end could come at any time, as if without warning, like a thief in the night.
The response appears to be diminishing, but wasn't your original point about how violent and hostile we can expect the response to be?
There is nothing about this in the Bible. Paul wasn't speaking of an outbreak resulting in a proclamation, he was just agreeing with 2 Peter 3:3 that there have been ridiculers since the first century saying they don't believe this parousia is coming because they can still talk about the relative peace and security that allows them to eat, drink, get married, etc. Adding to the Bible that we should wait for a proclamation by political kings shows a lack of discretion and a lack of discernment. Remember that Jesus, too, spoke of the time coming as a time of relative peace and security when he compared it to a time when you might be asleep in your house, or working in a field, or grinding at a mill, or doing any of the things that people were doing in Noah's day or in Sodom when the end came, essentially without warning.
Just like Jesus, both Paul and Peter added that it would come "as a thief in the night." This way, no one would get the impression that we should look for some "proclamation by political kings" of peace and security. (Nor wait for some specific proclamation by ridiculers that "things are going on [peacefully and securely] just as from creation's beginning.")
For the same reason, there can be no specific time when any of us (GB included) can declare in advance that it is now time for a "final message of divine destruction." That would only show a level of presumptuousness and indiscretion. It would make us wise in our own eyes, and completely unfaithful to Jesus' words that "no one knows the day or the hour" because "it will come as a thief in the night."
Ah! Something we can agree on! 😊

This might often be true. But more often it brings a polite "no thank you" from those who don't want to listen. The proportion of countries where there is outright persecution and banning of our work has actually improved. In most countries of the world the reaction to our message is non-violent, even peaceful. And sometimes, it is obviously still quite enthusiastically positive. The 8.6 million plus publishers in 2019 conducted 9.6 million Bible Studies, and 300,000 new ones were baptized. That's nearly a third of a million new persons. And shows that on average there was more than one Bible Study conducted per publisher.
Of course, you picked the numbers from 2020 which dropped from 2019. @Witness already pointed out that they actually dropped .6% (which is based on the average monthly publishers, not just the "peak" which you quoted above). But the bigger drop from 2019 to 2020 was the number of Bible Studies which dropped 20%.
2019: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 9,618,182 2020: Average Bible Studies * Each Month: 7,705,765 They dropped by nearly TWO MILLION in one year! (Partly because we were asked not to keep studying with persons if there was no apparent progress.) But notice that they weren't replaced by new studies, so that the average is now much less than one Bible Study per publisher.
Also note the number of new ones baptized also dropped by 20%:
2019: Total Number Baptized *: 303,866 2020: Total Number Baptized *: 241,994 And unfortunately, this also means that over 300,000 persons left the Witnesses between 2019 and 2020 for there to still be a decrease even though so many were baptized. Some leave by death or disfellowshipping, but the vast majority of these 300,000 must have decided to leave.
And the 2021 numbers are already in, and the Society was not able to report an increase in publishers this year, except in a few individual branches.
This also means that there is no need for additional congregations, so I'm guessing that the number will continue to remain about the same, or more likely decrease. I wouldn't look for a 20% increase in congregations to 144,000 even though you think that number of congregations is somehow significant. Anecdotally, I already heard about a couple special language congregations (New York and Los Angeles) that are being dropped and reverting to their original congregations.
You are telling people that this system will go on for another 20 years, which is very unfaithful and indiscreet in light of Jesus' warning that the end could come at any time, as if without warning, like a thief in the night.
The response appears to be diminishing, but wasn't your original point about how violent and hostile we can expect the response to be?
There is nothing about this in the Bible. Paul wasn't speaking of an outbreak resulting in a proclamation, he was just agreeing with 2 Peter 3:3 that there have been ridiculers since the first century saying they don't believe this parousia is coming because they can still talk about the relative peace and security that allows them to eat, drink, get married, etc. Adding to the Bible that we should wait for a proclamation by political kings shows a lack of discretion and a lack of discernment. Remember that Jesus, too, spoke of the time coming as a time of relative peace and security when he compared it to a time when you might be asleep in your house, or working in a field, or grinding at a mill, or doing any of the things that people were doing in Noah's day or in Sodom when the end came, essentially without warning.
Just like Jesus, both Paul and Peter added that it would come "as a thief in the night." This way, no one would get the impression that we should look for some "proclamation by political kings" of peace and security. (Nor wait for some specific proclamation by ridiculers that "things are going on [peacefully and securely] just as from creation's beginning.")
For the same reason, there can be no specific time when any of us (GB included) can declare in advance that it is now time for a "final message of divine destruction." That would only show a level of presumptuousness and indiscretion. It would make us wise in our own eyes, and completely unfaithful to Jesus' words that "no one knows the day or the hour" because "it will come as a thief in the night."
Ah! Something we can agree on! 😊

Fun fact: The word "proletariat" comes from the Latin word "proletarius", which means "maker of offspring".
In Ancient Rome, the proletarii were the people who were so poor that the only form of property that they had were their children, who could be used as soldiers.
Little has changed since then.

This story is still getting coverage on the news. (It was usually reported that a Chinese tennis player had accused a high-ranking Chinese government official of sexual assault and then suspiciously "disappeared.")  Yesterday, I heard the same story repeated on our local NPR news station and there was an interview with a representative of the WTA (Women's Tennis Association) saying they would pull out of China for all the final tournaments because even though they have spoken with her and she confirms she is OK, they don't think she is "really" OK.
That wording sounded oddly typical, but I could understand a legitimate concern for such a person, too, just as I would for a situation like this anywhere else in the world. But then the conversation took an interesting turn. They said they were hoping to use her example to try to get other sports to pull out of the Winter Olympics in China, and that this case can help draw attention to civil rights abuses, and the genocide of Uyghurs. I didn't even know there was an upcoming Winter Olympics in China, and there is so much money in sports that I had my doubts that the politics the WTA was pushing would really win out over financial incentives for other sports (and other countries) to mount a boycott. The NPR interviewer praised them for this altruistic goal.
I have already seen a lot of evidence about how the "genocide of Uyghurs" has been massively exaggerated. And I had just read evidence that Western media had purposely lied to create a false story about a few, small "social credit" experiments that had been tried in a couple of Chinese cities but were abandoned.  So I was all the more suspicious that this story had been exaggerated, too.
I had already heard that there were pictures of her going out to dinner and even playing tennis and giving autographs to young persons. But I didn't really look into it in any depth until yesterday and quickly discovered that the most likely scenario here is that it was entirely fake news. Peng Shuai had never even accused anyone of sexual assault. I read several full translations of the original post that she wrote on her social media site, Weibo, and which she later took down. I wanted to see why people were reading "assault" into it.
I'll provide a link to a pretty good summary of the entire affair, and copy major portions of it below.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/12/the-missing-star-athlete-peng-shuai-is-not-missing-at-all.html

At last, to my mind, you have scored a definitive hit, not a dubious one.
I’ll be carrying on about how I love big brother next.

Underhanded or at least backhanded.

I always imagine many volcanoes, eruptions and dense smoke (the elements of the skies were definitely not like today) and a cooling down process with very much condensation. Jehovah's spirit was actively moving over the waters, which was a by-product of the creation process of the earth itself, and overseeing the natural activities of the earth and the settling down of the powerful processes. Tectonic plates were often moving and settling - which shaped the original earth. Only thereafter, when things were ready and settled,  did Jehovah start with the preparation of the earth for human inhabitants - in 6 days or "periods of time".

097d87e45983b9d4d7ac8990f31947cf.mp4   The scriptures plainly point out that the earth existed prior to the Six Creative Days on the earth. WE read, "Now the earth was formless and desolate, and there was darkness upon the surface of the watery deep, and God’s active force was moving about over the surface of the waters." (Genesis 1:2)
The Earth wasn't the first thing created in our Solar System, but rather, the Last thing created in our Solar System. Scientific carbon dating, dates our Earth to be about 4.5 Billion Years Old, which is relatively young to the rocks found on the earth from terrestrial sources that have been dated to be about 15 Billion Years Old.
However, the Bible speaks about a Creation prior to the Genesis 1:1 account. "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;  because by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and on the earth, the things visible and the things invisible, whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities. All other things have been created through him and for him. " (Colossians 1:15-17)   https://www.brorando.com/post/was-the-earth-created-in-six-days

Someone has overplayed their hand then, is what you are saying?

If that's true, then one generation heard Jesus in 33 CE and another generation saw the destruction 37 years later in 70 CE. So you are speaking of two generations in the space of 37 years. This could mean you are thinking of each average generation as short as 18.5 years each, but probably longer, I'm guessing. (18.5+18.5=37)
You might have a point, since there is evidence for a Jewish practice near that time period that suggested 18 years of age for the husband and as young as 13 for the wife.
Marriage took place at a young age for the ancient Jews. Most rabbis proposed 18 as the most appropriate age for men to be married, but it wasn’t uncommon for them to be younger, especially in times of peace. Young women were married almost as soon as they were physically ready, approximately age 13.  http://blog.adw.org/2017/03/marriage-family-time-jesus/
Without birth control, the first child would probably be born when the husband turned 19 and the wife turned 14, giving birth to the next generation. (Oh look, the birth of something around 19&14. That could be significant. Maybe they would have 6 o' 7 kids, too.)
But if each generation could be under 20 years, this would mean there have now been, not TWO, but FIVE generations between 1914 and 2021. (107/20=5.35+) And counting from 1914 and adding Noah's 120 years would be SIX generations, at that rate.
Exactly!! Excellent point!

I don't understand how we could be living together with people we aren't living together with.
If we are dead, and they haven't even been born, how are we "living together?"

*** ka chap. 11 pp. 209-210 par. 55 “Here Is the Bridegroom!” ***
In the year 1943 the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society published the book “The Truth Shall Make You Free.” In its chapter 11, entitled “The Count of Time,” it did away with the insertion of 100 years into the period of the Judges and went according to the oldest and most authentic reading of Acts 13:20, and accepted the spelled-out numbers of the Hebrew Scriptures. This moved forward the end of six thousand years of man’s existence into the decade of the 1970’s. Naturally this did away with the year 1874 C.E. as the date of return of the Lord Jesus Christ and the beginning of his invisible presence or parousia.