Just how “wondrous” is the expansion now taking place?

Part 1 – Is wondrous expansion now taking place?

If you are one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, then your whole outlook on the bible and life itself will be defined by the teachings of the Watch Tower Society. You accept these teachings without question, because these come down to us from the “Faithful Slave Class”, as represented by the Governing Body. At your baptism, likely you answered a loud and affirmative “yes!” to the following question:

“Do you understand that your dedication and baptism identify you as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses in association with God’s spirit-directed organization?” (Organized To Do Jehovah’s Will, page 215)

If someone were to ask why, as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, you believe that the Watch Tower Society is God’s spirit-directed organization, you would likely give any one of the following answers:

It may be that you consider ALL of the above answers to be satisfactory in explaining why the Society has God’s backing. Certainly, all answers are used to varying degrees in the Society’s publications to support the idea that they enjoy Jehovah’s approval and direction. However, do these answers hold up under close scrutiny, without religious or emotional bias?

To find out, I’ve prepared a series of four articles to discuss each of these “criteria” for divine direction, of which this is the first. You are invited to examine each article, weigh the information carefully, and reach your own conclusions as to whether Jehovah’s Witnesses truly represent God’s organization on Earth today. In so doing, you will be taking to heart the words found at 2 Corinthians 13:5, where Paul says: “Keep testing whether you are in the faith, keep proving what you yourselves are.”

So with this in mind, let’s begin by discussing the first criterion for God’s backing of the organization, namely the seemingly ‘wondrous expansion’ being enjoyed by Jehovah’s Witnesses around the globe.

Worldwide Growth as Evidence

Without wishing to burst anyone’s bubble, the worldwide growth of Jehovah’s Witnesses between 2010 and 2011 was very low indeed, at a mere 2.4%. If you were to calculate only the growth in developed countries mentioned in the worldwide report, this figure would drop to as little as 1.2%. However, for the sake of argument, let’s focus on the official growth figure of 2.4%. When considering this statistic, you might feel inclined to proclaim: “Well that’s still growth! The numbers continue to swell to as many as 7,659,019 peak publishers in 2011!”

When compared with the Earth’s population, the number of Jehovah’s Witnesses is almost infinitesimal

Well, consider this. The population of the Earth is estimated at 7 billion. When 7.6 million publishers are considered against the backdrop of this vast and staggering number of people, they pale almost into insignificance. Simply put, little more than 0.1% of the Earth’s population are active Jehovah’s Witnesses, or 1 in every 914 people. Assuming that Jehovah will kill all those who are not Jehovah’s Witnesses at Armageddon (as often insinuated in the Society’s literature), this means that 99.9% of the Earth’s population are due for annihilation. That would be comparable with every human soul on Earth dying, apart from all those living in the State of Virginia (with its estimated population of approximately 8,096,604). So in that context, does last year’s growth figure of 2.4%, a net increase of 151,000 publishers, still sound so impressive?

Let’s assume that 2.4% is indicative of the future growth in the number of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and it never decreases or increases. Imagine the Society set an ambitious target of reaching 14 million publishers before Armageddon. It would take another 25 years for us to reach that figure, and (assuming the world’s population remained the same) Jehovah’s Witnesses would still only amount to 0.2% of the planet’s inhabitants, equivalent to the population of Guatemala, or one Jehovah’s Witness for every 500 people. Do you honestly believe that only one in every 500 people would be considered by Jesus as being a good person, worthy of salvation? Can you imagine Jesus, if he were on Earth today, stopping to talk to every 500th person, but ignoring the rest – as these are condemned to death?

Without wishing to sound disrespectful or in any way blasphemous concerning God’s purpose, let’s for a moment imagine that Jehovah decided to bring Armageddon at the point where 1% of the Earth’s population are Jehovah’s Witnesses – that’s 1 in every 100 people worldwide (still a very “narrow door”). Based on the current growth rate, we would need to wait until 2105 for this to happen – a staggering 93 years in the future! And that’s without factoring in the projected rise in the Earth’s population over that period.

Now let’s return to the current publisher figures, and imagine that Jehovah brought Armageddon tomorrow and saved a more generous number of, say, 140 million survivors (roughly the population of Bangladesh) – which is still just 2% of the Earth’s population, or 1 in every 50 people. Assuming that every single member of Jehovah’s Witnesses was included among those saved, they would still only make up 5.5% of all survivors – a tiny fraction by anyone’s standards.

I give these explanations and illustrations to highlight the fact that, as a religion, Jehovah’s Witnesses are nowhere near as significant in number as we are led to believe. Given that Jehovah’s Witnesses only make up 0.1% of the Earth’s population, it’s highly flattering that we receive any attention from the press and media at all – and often this only comes as a result of our controversial policies such as those connected with blood transfusions or the handling of child abuse cases.

2.4% may sound to some like an impressive growth statistic, but when considering the number of Jehovah’s Witnesses in relation to the world’s population, and the size and scope of the global preaching work, this statistic falls woefully short of what would be considered meaningful growth for an organization of our size and aspirations.

Conversion Matches Gestation

It now takes as many hours of ministry per baptism as it takes for a baby to develop in the womb

According to the 2011 worldwide report, last year 6,487 hours were spent in field service for every baptism (1,707,094,710 hours to achieve 263,131 baptisms). That’s 270 days, or 9 months of solid field service (round the clock) to produce a baptized publisher from doorstep to baptism pool. We’re not talking about 9 months of visiting someone every week or so, we’re talking 9 months of preaching to someone all day, every day, with no sleep. In simple terms, the average speed of conversion can now barely keep pace with the speed of human gestation in the womb!

But let’s think about this in more practical terms. After all, we would be physically unable to study with somebody flat-out, 24 hours each day, for 9 months – let alone find somebody who would be willing to endure such a study regime. What about if we spent the average number of hours in ministry each month? According to the worldwide report, the average number of hours per publisher is approximately 18. If you were to spend 18 hours each month studying with just this one potential convert, on average it would take 30 years of studying to bring him or her to baptism based on the figures mentioned above. 30 years!

We might well ask ourselves: if it’s proving so very difficult and time-consuming to attract new ones to the good news and bring them to baptism, despite the great variety of publications that we have available, can this really be clear evidence that we as an organization are enjoying God’s blessing? Can the “truth” really be as simple and easy for people to grasp as we are led to believe? Consider the following words of Jesus, which convey how simple the truth should be to grasp:

“I publicly praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intellectual ones and have revealed them to babes.” (Matthew 11:25, New World Translation)

So, when we honestly and carefully consider this first criterion for divine backing, we are forced to admit that using worldwide expansion as evidence for divine direction is an exaggeration at best, and a deception at worst. Furthermore, there is growing evidence to suggest that the Society is in decline, or at least scaling down on its operations. The impact of this is only now being felt, but if the Society continues to shrink in size (i.e. the number of branches) and printed output, then it won’t be long before a similar downturn is observed in our publisher figures. After all, the preaching work is heavily reliant on having printed publications to offer on the ministry. If it takes 9 months of 24-hour preaching to produce each new publisher, one can only imagine how many months or years it would take to achieve this goal without any literature to offer on the doorstep, or to study with interested ones!

If you are an active Jehovah’s Witness, you may have found the above information difficult to take in – but you are to be commended for being brave enough to give it careful thought. In the next article in this series, I will discuss further reasons why the Watch Tower Society’s claims of divine backing may be misleading.

 

 

 

 

 

19 thoughts on “Under the microscope – the Watch Tower Society’s claims to divine direction (part 1)

  • May 1, 2012 at 1:43 pm
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    Thanks I hope you got my post
    Eric

  • May 1, 2012 at 1:48 pm
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    Hello Eric, thanks for commenting. Which post are you referring to?

  • May 23, 2012 at 2:13 pm
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    You must like numbers, lol. Great dissection of the facts & figures.

    There will be many people from NATIONS (plural) who survive the Final Battle at Jerusalem, all of whom will be required thereafter to attend the Feast of Tabernacles every year in Jerusalem (see Zech. 14:1-2, 4, 16-19).

    (Btw, Armageddon is merely the PLACE where the world’s armies will be GATHERED before they proceed 150 miles south to “come against Jerusalem.” Yes, literal Jerusalem in the literal Middle East, exactly as Zech. describes as occurring in “The Day of the LORD.”)

  • May 23, 2012 at 2:21 pm
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    PS & Tip for JWs who are taught NOT to read scripture LITERALLY & IN CONTEXT:

    Armageddon >> (huge, wide open) Valley of Megiddo a/k/a Valley of Jezreel >> a literal place. Check a map of literal (modern) Israel.

  • June 23, 2012 at 7:02 pm
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    A few years ago, the Pew Research Forum reported two interesting facts about Witnesses: (A) they had one of the highest growth rates in America, and (B) they had far and away the worst retention rate. The majority of new JWs leave within only a couple years. How long is that sustainable?
    Also, a few years ago the number of hours it took to qualify as a “regular” publisher were drastically reduced, so how accurate are current growth numbers when compared to past years’ numbers when the qualifying hours were higher?

  • October 18, 2012 at 3:01 pm
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    Hola,
    Podemos hacer un ejercicio interesante comparando sus numeros con el de los mormones, por ejemplo.
    Los mormones predicaron en 2011 200 millones de horas y bautizaron 280.000 personas, lo que da un resultado de 715 horas, 9 VECES MAS eficaces que los testigos…. y con una tas de retencion mayor… interesante, no?

  • November 24, 2013 at 7:18 am
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    Well Noah preached the word for 120yrs and only him and his family survived the flood. So a lack of converts is not necessarily a lack of divine approval. And this doesn’t take into account the 100 or so each day who are disfellowshipped. So the numbers of new converts are enough to make up for the disfellowshipped and the growth. Neither does your article take into account the thousands who do leave each year. So if no-one left the JWs the growth would be quite a lot bigger. But I do see your point on how long it takes to get just one person baptised and in that case also you need to remember that many newly baptised have been born and raised as JWs.

  • March 6, 2014 at 2:33 am
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    …perhaps Only noah and family were saved because while noah was building the arch, Satan and company were on earth killing all the righteous one’s resisting him :)

  • May 27, 2014 at 9:35 pm
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    Cedars,

    Thanks for this – I would be interested to see what the growth figures were like for other major religions around the world – Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism etc.

    Would be good to get a comparison to see whether they are actually growing faster than the others.

  • August 5, 2014 at 8:54 pm
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    It is an interesting article regarding expansion. Gives one food for thought. I am curious if comparing the time frame of the JW. Organization against the same time frame during the early church how the numbers would compare. Was the expansion of the early church about as fast? Just asking. Also, I see many JW halls scattered throughout the states. They are small and very much remind me of the “rural country church” that reaches a certain growth then dies or shrinks. I also would consider the growth rate of other religions over the same period of time. Is it comparable? I look around and seem to observe that western culture has, to some degree, lost its hunger for the things of God. Perhaps this lack of interest in the “Christian” God iis a bigger issue than just the JWs. I am not a JW, and do not support their doctrine, but I believe the questions I raise may help us look at ourselves as well.

  • October 2, 2016 at 4:25 pm
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    Lloyd: Thanks for that “Great Informative Article” and I look forward to the time when 99.9% of the earth is wiped out………as Traffic on the San Diego Freeway will be Wonderful! (lol)
    Facts are Facts and I am sure your going to make a chapter in your new book about these FACTS!
    Wow….the Elders would really like to have a Word with you! haha… Keep up the Great Fact Checking!

  • January 8, 2017 at 4:48 am
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    I like to compare the increase of the witnesses, who claim to have God’s backing, with the efforts of other ‘false religion’ churches who started around the same time: the Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists (SDA’s). One would think that the witnesses would be zooming ahead with God’s backing…oh no, we are following a similar projectory to the SDA’s and Mormons but I believe we are actually doing worse than they were at this point of their increase. The SDA’s are particularly impressive… who doesn’t like drinking alcohol, eating pork and going travelling on Saturdays? But, totally surprisingly, the SDA’s have found a huge amount of people who don’t. Can you believe they have found 1 million people in India who don’t want to drink beer or eat pork chops? And the witnesses in India? 40,000. Is that all? That’s pathetic in comparison. Why isn’t Jehovah drawing people from the whole world in equal numbers? Why only from mainly Catholic countries (Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador)?

    Actually I think our increases (JW’s) are quite pathetic and should give any witness with an open mind a large degree of concern. As the last days progress we should see more and more people streaming in and more and more pioneers. The figure for 2015 increase: 1.3%. Pathetic. In the western nations we are preaching and preaching and preaching and nobody wants to listen. My prediction is that as more and more western countries follow the lead of Poland (which is now giving a sizable decrease), the decrease will cancel out the increases which are mainly coming from Brazil, Mexico and a little from Angola, Nigeria and Ecuador, and the number of witnesses will stagnate. How will the Governing Body explain this?

  • January 11, 2017 at 7:50 am
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    While a agree that the numbers stared in the post suggest that the WTS is fairly deceptive, you also think that only Witnesses will be saved, which the organization has not held to be true for years. They suggest that a massive number of honest-hearted people who have never heard of their teachings will be resurrected to be given the chance. The article is still relevant, but slightly midleading/dishonest itself in that regard.

    • February 17, 2017 at 3:26 am
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      @Colby,
      I think, when it is stated that only Witnesses will be saved, that means at Armageddon. And our beliefs are that at Armageddon only Witnesses will be saved. So the article commented correctly.

      The trouble is that we also claim that only the incorrigible wicked will be destroyed. Which means a whole lot of people are going to become witnesses between now and Armageddon. Now that we are just not seeing. If anything, we are seeing a pathetic increase which will soon become a decrease.

      It is an unbelievable claim, which articles like this are bringing out is unbelievable.

  • February 16, 2017 at 10:42 pm
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    hahaha….cant stop laughing…

    dats a poor attempt to discredit the preaching work sir..
    every jw knows dat preaching to others is not to force them to become a jw..rather to reason wit them and tell dem d truth as contained in the bible..then if they accept to one of jw,,they are baptised..its a slow process..

    well i shuldnt av commented cos all u apostates know wat u are doin..to present lie as lie and circumvent the truth.

    • February 16, 2017 at 11:00 pm
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      hahahahaha…..yeah,man….and everyone knows the first thing a cult does to a potential recruit is to convince them the bible has been corrupted so that they can insert their ‘here’s one I prepared earlier’ bible into the mix but you are so lucky that was’t done to you, aye. You’re much too smart to fall for that one.

    • February 17, 2017 at 3:37 am
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      @UNOH,
      It is all very well to laugh. But when we enter our decade of overall worldwide decrease in 2020, how many witnesses will be laughing? Not many, I am sure. There will be many confused witnesses. Confused because numbers are dropping, confused because of the millions of dollars we are paying out as compensation for child abuse, confused because the iminent new system has stubbornly continued to go on and on and on.

      So laugh, laugh now while you can. But if you are wise, don’t act as a smart alec. It is better to be quiet and not look foolish rather than to open your mouth and prove you are foolish.

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