"Although the terrorist attack was horrific, but I must admit its exciting!" said one JW elder I spoke to on the phone yesterday.
He said that there was a sister that has been a JW for more than 50 years that said "At last, something is hapenning."
(BTW, he told me that most congregations in the US have been instructed that when talking to people, they should not bring up the issues of blood or neutrality.) Can anyone confirm this?
I am sure many JWs shared the same sentiments as the above elder. A couple of years ago, I would have expressed similar comments.
This is due to the fact that JWs are conditioned to associate world affairs to the sign of Jesus' presence. This is precisely what Jesus instructed his true followers NOT to do. Not wanting to disappoint them was his motive. But disapointment was definitely what was experienced by JWs who associated events leading up to and including WWI to be somehow linked to Jesus' return.
Another disappointment was in store after the 1925 debacle, although no major world event took place then. Only the speculations if not false prophecies of Judge Rutherford were the culprit.
Then, it was WWII. If the dropping of atomic bombs and the instant killings of a hundred thousand civilians in their homes could not be interpreted as a divine sign of some sort, I do not know what else could be. Yet, that too, was not it.
The Cold War, that was born even before WWII was concluded, was heralded by JW writings as the last phase of the ongoing biblical struggle of King of The North and King of the South and would culminate in Armageddon. The Cold War ended in 1989.
Since then, the US fought in Grenada, Panama, Gulf War, Somalia, Yugoslavia and due to last week's terrorist attack, another war is looming with Afghanistan.
The world was shocked last week by the killing of thousands of innocent people only because they were able to see it live on television. More than half a million were slaughtered to death in Rawanda and the world, comparatively speaking, did not blink an eye. in Zaire, formerly known as Congo, more than one million persons are believed to have been killed in the past year alone and the killings are ongoing.
War on Terrorism will be a long ongoing struggle, very much like the war on drugs, the war on crime and the war on organised crime. Sometime in the future, another conflict might raise its ugly head, and the drums of war will beat again.
The point is that if a Christian is truly waiting for the return of his Lord and Master, then a sure recipe for disappointment is observing wars and conflicts as a sign.