1914 ,the Generation that got tossed in the Garbage Can (page 7)

Zico

Hi JWFacts,

I didn't know about the generation teaching, and I also thought that it was the members who came up with the 75 date, and not the Society! When I spoke to the same people about this date, they thought the same thing, except for one guy who knew, but had the theory that Jehovah had used the date to cleanse the Congregation... I'm surprised the Society never used that one.

So, at what point did you brothers and sisters in 1975 realise that this teaching was wrong? What was that feeling like?

heathen

I've seen and heard talks from the pre 75 era and it was clearly a marketing gimmick from the WTBTS , when it didn't work out they blamed the R&F for getting over excited about it . It seems everytime there's a change in the president of the WTBTS they like to push the , this is it , button . Even the guy before jaracz , I remember him saying things like he was expecting to walk right out of this world and into the next . I think he died even, so how about that for irony .

yaddayadda

It's what got me first wondering that something might be screwy about the Society's chronology etc. I started to wonder, "wot else have they got wrong". It's what first made me think that they might be just 'winging it' after all.

Black Sheep

My father tried the generation thing on me not long before I joined the forum, so he hadn't even picked up on it.

It was that conversation that finally got me studying the WT. One of the first things I found out was the change in 1995.

I don't know if the rest of my family noticed the change, but I do know that nobody bothered to notify me that my demise might not be as imminent as they had been predicting. Considering my decision to not join Jehovah's Organisation and to just take my medicine at Armageddon you would have thought that was good news for me and that they might have told me about it.

zagor

VM44,

Thank you for the cover, it sent shivers down my spine. We usually talk about 1914 screw up, but until you see it in print it doesn't have such a big impact. Man this is huge. Think of all those people putting their lives on hold because of that belief. WOW!

Today's Apostasy is Tomorrow's New Light.

That sums it up rather well MC

Hellrider

Alan F:

The "separating of the sheep and the goats" was now in the future, rather than something that current JWs were participating in.

Question: Could the changing of this doctrine also be a change they started on to actually "liberalise" the view on who will die at Armageddon? (and, by that, become a more "acceptable" and mainstream religion) I mean, if the separating of sheeps and goats is not being done by the preaching work (those that shut the door on jws are goats), then the liberal view "we don`t know who will survive Armageddon" might ...hold more water than before, or...? Or have I misunderstood?

Zico

Hellrider, Good question! I was thinking the same thing.

luna2

Midwich said: You mean that the end of a failed Prophesy coincided with New Light from God? Gosh, that was lucky.

This is what I said about 6 months ago to the one sister who kept coming by and calling me on the phone trying to guilt me back to the KH. My words were more along the lines of how very convenient it was that just as it was getting to be obvious that the 1914 generation thing had reached its absolute upper limits, Jehovah provided new light to save the day. Her response was to ask me if I'd been looking at apostate stuff on the internet.

This is an intelligent, college-educated woman, folks. It's amazing how muddled you get when you let the WTS do your thinking for you.

I think the GB waited as long as they did to twist this thing because they knew that it made Jehovah's Witnesses as a faith look completely stupid. They made no huge announcement of this fabulous new information received from God Almighty Himself, just kind of buried it in a bunch of almost incomprehensible rhetoric in a Watchtower study. I remember coming away from the KH that day feeling completely confused...which was the response they were probably hoping for.

I mean, you get all this "Important Announcement" crap about a dopey tract campaign that is just busy work to keep the R&F trotting on their treadmill, thinking they are moving forward, but major doctrinal changes get slipped in more quietly...talks at conventions, a few paragraphs in a Watchtower study...like its no big deal.

BizzyBee

Well said, Luna.

You have to wonder if JWs are sleepwalking through life to not question this. I wonder if I would have accepted this in 1995 if I were still a Wit........?

Emma

must have stood there 'knowing' that they would never die!

This is what pulled my mom into the org. She believed she'd never die; she died this summer, "faithful" since about '55. I didn't have contact with her as she lived with my sisters who are die-hard, drink the cool-aid jw's. I wonder if she knew about the generation change and what it did to her. I wonder what her last days were like. She died of congestive heart failure so must have known her hours were numbered. I wish I could have been there to hold her and tell her it was OK. How many others must have had to face the error of their entire lives; it breaks my heart.

1914 ,the Generation that got tossed in the Garbage Can

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