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[Music] hello there and welcome to the bunker i'm lloyd evans and in this video we absolutely must talk about the 2020 service year report released yesterday which indicates that for the first time in 42 years there has been a drop in global jehovah's witness numbers which have fallen over the previous year's numbers by 0.6 percent and if you'll just excuse me for one moment there's just something i need to do anyway as you can imagine i've been going over the figures i do make it something of a tradition to go over the service year report whenever it comes out each year i did so for the last service report for the 2019 service report and in that video i went as far back as 2017 in looking at the number of countries large countries falling into decline and when i say large countries i mean countries with a population of more than a million i realize that there are lots of other countries that are smaller than that and i don't mean to offend anyone living in those countries but just for the purpose of getting a grasp of how significant these figures are i've decided to just focus statistically on the larger countries and in this video i mentioned that for 2017 based on the peak figures 37 countries went into decline that year in 2018 that figure rose very slightly to 38 countries reporting a drop in peak jehovah's witness numbers 2019 the figure rose to 44 large countries registering a decline in peak jehovah's witness figures at this point i should mention that when i say peak i'm talking about the highest number that country has reached in any given month i prefer the average figure and for two years 2017 and 2018 watchtower withheld inexplicably the average figures for on a country by country basis they've now gone back to using the average figures or showing us the average figures i should say so switching to using the average figures for 2020 which we can now do because we can compare with the last year bear in mind again 44 countries in 2019 posting reductions in peak figures for 2020 that number rose to 70. 70 countries registered declines in the number of jehovah's witnesses average jehovah's witness publishers i'm going to show you which countries these are and as you can see wow there's a lot of red there i should just mention that the dark grey are countries where the work of jehovah's witnesses is underbanned so we don't really know with any certainty what's going on in those countries in a good number of those countries we can be fairly certain that there are either no witnesses at all or next to no witnesses but in red on this map i've marked every country that posted a decline in jehovah's witness numbers canada has managed this now for two years in a row although before you canadians start getting too excited i should just mention that it was only by 17 so there was only a drop in canadian average jehovah's witnesses by 17 but just look at africa africa being the continent that watchtower looks to as an engine of growth because they can exploit people who in general have a harder time making ends meet who in general and again i hate generalizing because i realize that there are many in africa for whom this will not apply but i think it's fairly safe to say that access to the internet on the continent of africa will not be the same as access to the internet say in europe or in north america watchtower exploits this watchtower exploits the fact that it's harder to get objective information about the religion and yet look what happened in 2020 look at how many countries 23 sorry 24 in total in africa registering fewer average jehovah's witnesses in 2020 than there were in 2019. now i thought it might be useful to compile a list of all the countries against 70 large countries that have posted declines and this list will be available in the description below but let's just take a look at it you'll notice i've ordered the list in terms of the actual numbers quote unquote leaving because we don't know do we exactly how many how many have actually left the religion we don't know exactly how many have died how many have moved to different countries but if you take the figure for average publishers in 2020 and you compare it with the previous year what kind of numbers are you looking at in terms of how fewer how many fewer jehovah's witnesses there are i've ordered it in that way so top of the list surprisingly is nigeria nigeria being again one of those countries where you just expect it would be easier for jehovah's witnesses to do well to dupe people quite frankly into joining again that says nothing about nigerians it's just i'm thinking purely in terms of the ease of accessing the internet in a developing country you also have the democratic republic of congo as well as zambia and angola all of these four countries were registering growth in 2019 now they're registering a decline in the case of nigeria as many as 26 000 reduction in publishers 10 000 in the democratic republic of congo 6 000 in zambia and 5715 there in angola south africa also high on the list you'll notice that's kind of a pale yellow color that's because south africa also registered a decrease the previous year so countries that were also in decline in 2019 i've just marked in that slightly different color which as you can see there includes britain venezuela poland now with venezuela i do just want to mention that i got quite excited last year in 2019 about the numbers that we're leaving as you can see we've now had in consecutive years uh the numbers decreasing quite substantially i hadn't factored in at all the fact that that particular country is undergoing um quite a significant social and political upheaval and so i don't think we can read too much into the figures in the same way as we could if there was no social or political upheaval going on so i do just want to correct what i was saying in my last service year analysis service report analysis you also have poland which i obviously made a documentary about this year i'll just reel off the country shall i zimbabwe malawi germany madagascar ukraine netherlands japan kenya el salvador togo cuba italy tanzania haiti lesotho hungary austria jamaica guatemala benin cote d'ivoire moldova puerto rico switzerland finland greece liberia czech republic denmark croatia new zealand kazakhstan burkina faso slovakia armenia cameroon romania aswatini serbia lithuania honduras gabon slovenia estonia botswana chad nicaragua albania pakistan kyrgyzstan sudan central african republic latvia sweden hong kong bosnia and herzegovina just a few minutes away from where i live north macedonia canada mongolia kosovo nija and palestinian territories and you can see there on the list that canada reduced by 0.01 or jehovah's witnesses so you know let's not get too excited when we see the country in red on the map but nevertheless given how much watchtower has thrown at indoctrinating canadians and people all over the world given all of the resources that watchtower has deployed in trying to fool people into joining jw broadcasting car witnessing jw.org all number of initiatives that they've tried and they still can't stop this decline where there isn't a noticeable decline in numbers in many countries there's just stagnation but for this list we're not just talking about stagnation about the numbers not really climbing by much we're talking about numbers actually falling now at this point it's worth asking why why are the numbers falling why the numbers falling in for example 24 countries in africa i think it's not as simple as it being any one reason i'm fascinated to hear what reason watchtower comes up with and i'm going to go into that in a bit more detail shortly i think we're realistically looking at a combination of factors predominantly the fact that the internet is wreaking havoc on this organization so that it's getting harder and harder and harder almost with each passing gear for the organization to stop the tide of criticism and stop the tide of resources that are debunking its plainly nonsensical teachings so that people even in developing countries where access to the internet isn't quite what it should be people are either somehow getting hold of the information anyway or perhaps there's a word of mouth element going on people ultimately don't like being lied to and i think we've seen this for a number of years now it was never just going to be a case of the growth percentage bumping around at 1.4 percent or 1.3 percent year after year after year after year eventually eventually the numbers had to fall below the zero line and now they have that's not to say they might not peak above the zero line again they may well bounce back in 2021 or 2022 or 2023 but i'm still grabbing these figures with both hands because they are at the very least sending a very strong message to jehovah's witnesses that something's not quite right i mean this goes entirely against the narrative of wondrous expansion taking place of the nation's flocking to jehovah's organization there's a whole narrative there that is just being entirely contradicted by what we're actually seeing now in terms of the other factor i don't think we can discount the pandemic now if watchtower were to try and push the coronavirus pandemic as a reason and they're gonna have to come up with something aren't they they're gonna have to give some response to these figures i'm expecting them to do so when we get the annual meeting videos through which we'll begin to get through in january they will have known about these numbers when they held the annual meeting in october it's inconceivable or it's hard to imagine i should say that they wouldn't have warned the top brass when they were holding their annual meeting look there's a problem with the figures and having done that it's also very unlikely that they wouldn't also try to offer some kind of explanation whether they did that in the annual meeting or whether they're going to do it in a maybe a standalone governing body update video who knows we'll have to wait and see rest assured i'll be all over it when they do reach out with their explanation but they're going to blame it on either the coronavirus pandemic in which case they have a problem which i'll come to or the love of the greater number cooling off which i've joked about in the past it's part of the prophecy in i think matthew 24 where jesus warns that the the love of the greater number is going to cool off before armageddon knowing how quick they are to assign prophetic importance to innocuous events involving the organization it really wouldn't surprise me if they went down that route but it also wouldn't surprise me if they tried blaming it on the pandemic but if they do try blaming it on the pandemic the problem they have is that they've already kind of bragged about the facts that the pandemic has had very little effect on what they're doing take a look at this social distancing doesn't apply to jehovah he can wrap his arms around anyone many of our brothers have been reconnecting with long last return visits and unbelieving family members and starting bible studies with them and as you probably know meeting attendance has increased and inactive and disfellowshipped persons are also trying to draw close to jehovah one disfellowshipped person said i view this as one last warning from jehovah so that was david splain at this year's 2020 always rejoice convention which was released over the summer when we were already i don't know two or three months into the pandemic and there he is saying hey meeting attendance has increased and this isn't preventing us in any way shape or form from preaching and also inactive ones and disfellowshipped ones are realizing that their time is up and they need to come flocking back to the organization you can't go from saying all that to just flipping it and saying oh actually we've suffered as a result of the pandemic even if you have suffered as a result of the pandemic you then need to eat a bit of humble pie and say maybe we got a bit carried away when we were proclaiming how bulletproof we were back in the convention there is an interesting precedent as well though um i mentioned at the beginning of the video that this is the first decline in jehovah's witness numbers in 42 years 1978 was the last time there was a decline in jehovah's witness numbers we all know why that was it's because the 1975 prediction failed and they began to see the fallout from that in terms of people voting with their feet in the years immediately after 1975. but i have here the 1979 yearbook which has in it the 1978 figures and what's really interesting is that they acknowledge the minus 1.4 percent growth i'm not sure whether you can see it clearly there they acknowledge the number there at the bottom of the report but they also have a crack at explaining what the reason might be and i thought i would read just these two paragraphs because it will be interesting when the organization finally gets around to telling us what the reason is for what's happened in 2020 it will be interesting to compare that language with this language how should we view this situation there is certainly no need to become unduly disturbed and lose our spiritual balance as with all other things christians let god's word adjust their thinking and set things straight in their minds jehovah always provides them with needed direction in his own time and way he never forsakes his people during this new service year we will confidently look to him praying for his guidance and working to retrieve any who have strayed if there are those in our congregations who have slacked their hand blaming it on the rank and file efforts should be made especially by those who are under shepherds to encourage them kindly by word and above all by setting a good example at the same time we will have in mind the scriptures that forewarn us of what to expect some will stumble and fall away or become unfruitful for various reasons furthermore as shown at revelation 3 15 and 16 the lord jesus christ who knows the spiritual condition of each one who professes to be his follower does not tolerate lukewarmness he advises any who are in that state now to rectify their condition if they are to please him oh dear so kind of blaming it on the rank and file completely ignoring the fact that it was their botched 1975 prediction that caused all of this and also suggesting that it might be prophetic again i really wouldn't write off the current governing body from looking at these numbers and saying look this is exactly what we're supposed to expect as the great tribulation looms the love of the greater number is going to cool off this is actually a sign of how close we are to armageddon i wouldn't write that off i also wouldn't write them off in terms of uh offering the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse who knows we will have to wait and see but these are very encouraging figures i will just say for the sake of posterity because i've got overly excited in the past i mentioned venezuela i've gotten over excited in the past um reading a little bit too much into things it's worth just noting i think that when we're talking about the african countries some have emphatically it seems voted with their feet such as nigeria and the democratic republic of congo and you'll see in my list what i've done is i've looked at the populations of those countries to see if there's been any noticeable decline in the overall population that could indicate you know significant social or civil unrest impacting on the figures in both nigeria and congo the population actually increased in those two countries the general population and yet the number of witnesses fell dramatically in both of those two countries now in other african countries it could be that there was some kind of social or political unrest causing the dipping figures and as well it could be that in some countries that especially those that were kind of borderline and only just dipped into decline with their figures those could be countries where the coronavirus um has led to like a breakdown in the chain of communication making it impossible in some cases for witnesses to report time and in those situations it will have been reflected in the figures for those reporting i guess what i'm saying is let's see what happens in the future let's not get overly excited because again these figures or at least some of these figures could bounce back in 2021 or 2022 but overall the situation isn't improving for jehovah's witnesses because the fundamental problem they have with their global preaching work is that it's wrong is that it's all based on a lie and sooner or later the truth the real truth is always going to bubble to the surface and that's been the fundamental problem hampering the efforts of jehovah's witnesses for years now that problem isn't going to go away if anything it's going to get worse and worse and worse for jehovah's witnesses so even if there is a slight uptick in numbers in next year or the year after look it's only going in one direction for the organization long term and that's down i just wanted to conclude with a word to my fellow ex jehovah's witness activists let's take this moment to celebrate that our efforts are bearing fruit but let's celebrate quickly and let's get straight back to work because we absolutely cannot allow ourselves to become complacent we've got to keep working we've got to keep doing what we can those of us who are in a position to do this we've got to keep doing what we can to help people understand that they're being lied to by this organization so yes let's allow ourselves a quick moment to celebrate but then get straight back to work i am not going to be banging on about this forever i'm sure i will need to mention the 0.6 figure at some point next year because almost inevitably something's gonna get said in the jw broadcasting episode where they make it sound as though they're growing when they're not but i'd rather carry on and think about think not necessarily about those who have made it out well done fantastic glad that they found their freedom i'm not thinking so much about them i'm thinking about the eight and a half million or however many it is who are still trapped inside those are the ones i'm thinking about so let's just get straight back to work shall we and uh get those minds freed so that was pretty much everything i had to share with you actually just one final thing um 21 182. memorial partakers for 2020 an increase from the previous year which if you're wondering is 14.7 of 144 000 so every christian who is supposed to go to heaven who has ever lived since the time of christ 14.7 percent of them apparently are alive and among us today who would have thought anyway that really is everything i have to share with you now i hope you've enjoyed this video don't forget to subscribe to the lloyd evans channel for more such videos and as always thank you for watching [Music] thinking it's not forever you