What did the Watchtower Soceity REALLY say about 1975?

by Elsewhere 60 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Dansk

  Awake! has no fetters! It recognizes facts, facts, facts.

  But it tells lies, lies, lies!

  Ian
• 

  JH

  On this picture taken from that magazine, you can see the generation they talk about is a "period of time", unlike what they preach today. If they have the truth, why do they change it all the time?

  
• 

  AlmostAtheist

  >>If they have the truth, why do they change it all the time?

  They qualify it. They call it "present truth"! You gotta love that, dontcha? "Present truth", "sort of pregnant", "kinda dead"...

  Dave
• 

  cabasilas

  I remember that as 1975 passed the "Friends" got anxious. At circuit assemblies we were told that the delay was due to the time difference between Adam and Eve's creation. Earlier it was assumed that there was hardly any time difference but now we were told that there must have been an interval of time between Adam's creation and Eve's. (The 7th "creative day" did not begin until after Eve had been created.) Once that time interval (weeks, months, probably not years) passed, then the 7th creative day (meaning the Millennium) should begin. I remember hearing that for a couple of years after the 1975 disappointment. Did that ever make it into print? Or, was that just something said verbally at assemblies? Anyone know?
• 

  Bryan

  *** g68 10/8 p. 23-24 'Lift Up Your Head' in Confident Hope ***

  The evidence that we are far along in the "last days" can be either good news or bad news to you, depending on the position you take...Still some persons may say: "How can you be sure? Maybe it is later than many people think. But maybe it is not as late as some persons claim [YES, IT IS NOW AT LEAST 30 YEARS LATER, N.B.]. People have been mistaken about these prophecies before."

  That last line alone shows that the Tower believed they had the power of prophesy.

  Bryan
• 

  james_woods

  Well, of course we have to remember that Adam lived over 900 years. So, it would be reasonable to assume that he could very well have been hangin around with Lilith (the WitchWoman that the demons provided before the gift of Eve) probably for maybe 40 years or so. His own personal midlife crazy may not have happened until he was about 450 or so.

  This kind of reasoning would make it possible to bring back the "generation" of 1914 and still have your 1975 cake and eat it too.

  I have always pictured Lilith as a super-hot brunette who went on to be an assistant DA on Law & Order, but Eve as sort of an over-the-hill and over-the-weight blonde like an ageing Brittany Spears...

  Did they actually print this stuff about Eve's creation? I think they did, but for sure this was talked up at all the assemblies and by the circuit and district overseers of the day.
• 

  candidlynuts

  oooh i saw the 68 awake bound volume in my dads collection..do i have the nerve to pull it out and "glance" thru it and accidently land on the october issue?

  i doubt it lol i'm a big chicken
• 

  Leolaia

  There is however a time limit for Eve's creation:

  "When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them "man". When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth" (Genesis 5:1-3).

  And Seth was already Adam's third son in Genesis, and if you want to harmonize things, they would have also had to have a girl to serve as Cain's wife. So the 130 years will run out by 2105, although I'm pretty sure no one in the JWs by then would notice....The Society has entirely dropped the matter of the 6,000 years, giving no other explanation than the delay in Eve's creation back in the '70s, they have never repudiated the methodology itself, so apparently the Eve explanation still stands even though few of those who came into the organization since 1980 would even be aware of the teaching...
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  james_woods

  And is it not worth mentioning the silly and phony little abandonment of the 7000 year creative day idea?

  As near as I can make it out, the 6000 years of man's existence + 1000 year rule of Christ only adds up if you start with 7000...which WTS apparantly does not teach anymore. "Several" thousand, not "Seven" thousand.

  And, come to think of it - I never even understood where they got that 7000 year creative day theory from in the first place. Yeah - so a day with YHWH is 1000 years; but how did that get transmuted into "seven thousand"?

  Of course, new light may come at any moment.
• 

  sir82

  Leo,

  they have never repudiated the methodology itself, so apparently the Eve explanation still stands

  Check out my very first post, way back when...

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/90816/1.ashx

  There are still "old-school" elders in my congregation that spend their nights concocting various formulas for dates for Armageddon, based on the delay between Adam's & Eve's creation. I think one has calculated a date of 2008/2009, based on the length of time Jesus lived as a perfect human, vs. the length of time Adam would have lived as a perfect man (1975 + 33.5 years, Eve would have been created a few months prior to the original sin, etc.).

  One rather proudly told me once that he had been calculating dates for Armageddon since the 50's!

  "What's your batting average so far?" I asked. A scowl and a "Not so good" was the reply.